


Paper Doll

by DerangedBlackKitten



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Biting, Blood and Injury, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Depersonalization, Hurt/Comfort, Ignores Season 4, M/M, Medication, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Monster of the Week, Self-Harm, Slow Build Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Slow Burn, Steter Week, but not Eichen House, post season 3B, psychiatric hospitalization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2517059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DerangedBlackKitten/pseuds/DerangedBlackKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Peter Hale is dressed as an orderly...</i>
</p><p><i>Stiles is about 98% sure that this isn't going to end well.</i><br/>_______</p><p>Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.</p><p>(Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for Steter Week, but since I didn't finish the story in time, I'll continue working on it and updating it after the fact. 
> 
> This story ignores most of Season 4, and only borrows a few details here and there (like Liam, we'll keep that cute little puppy!), so there's no Kate resurrection or kidnapped and de-aged Derek, and there's no deadpool either. The story picks up several months after Season 3B, but there will be flashbacks about those missed months, and there's a big focus on the fact that Stiles would most definitely **not** be 'just fine' after everything with the nogitsune. 
> 
> Also, if you've come here for smut or steamy sex scenes, you're going to be disappointed because this story just doesn't call for it. 
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy! :)

* * *

 

**Chapter One**

On Sunday they serve macaroni casserole for lunch and Peter shows up for visitor's hour, which is weird because on Sundays they usually have soup and cold sandwiches for lunch, followed by meatloaf and assorted vegetables for dinner — though Stiles hasn't gotten as far as dinner, it's only 2 o'clock, so he can't be sure if the whole day's meal schedule is screwed up. He had already asked two different orderlies about it after the cafeteria lady's complete lack of interest in the change, but they had no explanation to offer, and he’d counted his fingers during Group Therapy every ten minutes just to be sure, because maybe he was still asleep and the casserole wasn't real.

It's not something that's really happened since they locked the nogitsune away, the whole waking dream thing, but these days, Stiles isn’t really too sure of anything in his life. He knows that several months back, he certainly never would have expected to be spending his late teen years in a place like this — worrying about a damned meal-change of all things, as if it’s some sort of Beacon Hills-like death omen and not just an alteration of the weekly menu.

It’s stupid to be so thrown off by it; a part of him can at least acknowledge that much, but acknowledging the irrationality of your thoughts doesn’t stop you from having those thoughts to begin with.

It’s not even _about_ the food is the thing, it’s about the repetition. It’s about the fact that for the entire three months that he’s been here, they’ve been serving the same set of meals based on what day of the week it is. Mondays are cold sandwich wraps for lunch and a hot pasta dish for dinner, Tuesday is pizza and then chicken with a side of vegetables, Wednesday is incidentally _taco day_ , which Stiles always thinks is a missed opportunity — but then again, maybe that’s on purpose after one too many _Taco Tuesday_ comments. Breakfast never changes day to day, it’s always the same set of options, but for lunch and dinner—

 _“Structure settles the mind,”_ his psychiatrist had told him about two weeks into his stay at Rosenbrook when he’d first noticed the repeated meals, _“If it bothers you, let us know. We know it’s not for everyone, and we’re always willing to make alterations to fit each patient’s needs.”_

Once upon a time, it probably _would_ have bothered him — driven him up the wall _crazy_ even — but as two weeks in the hospital had turned into three, Stiles had realized that the meal plan was the perfect way to keep track of the days.

Because sometimes the days bleed together, and just because he remembers yesterday being Saturday, doesn’t mean that it’s actually Sunday when he wakes up in the morning — at least, it’s not Sunday until he sees soup and cold sandwiches for lunch.

 _Macaroni casserole_ isn’t even anywhere on the entire week’s menu.

Stiles counts out his fingers again, quietly, tapping each fingertip down onto the tabletop before him — all too aware of the heavy presence of the camera in the corner of the private visitor’s room; a tiny blinking light indicating that it’s on. The whole thing is somehow even more off-putting to Stiles than Peter Hale himself sitting across the table from him.

_Seven. Eight._

Peter waits patiently; eyes tracking the movements of Stiles’ hands.

_Nine. Ten._

He stops.

All there. All present and accounted for. No more or less than there should be — though his nails have been bitten down to the quick, which he doesn’t remember doing, but he must have.

Stiles purses his lips. He starts to count again.

“Something wrong?” Peter asks, his tone casual, light.

Stiles finally looks up, meeting Peter’s gaze.

“Did you change the lunch menu?” he asks after a beat, because why the hell not? It is Peter Hale. Stiles wouldn’t put anything past him.

Peter arches an eyebrow up in a typical Hale fashion, "Would it make you feel better if I said yes?"

Stiles pauses, contemplates.

“…Yeah.”

Peter nods, as if that’s a perfectly rational response, and says, “Then yes, I changed the lunch menu. What were they serving before?"

A kind of despondent exhaustion creeps in.

“Soup and cold sandwiches,” Stiles tells him, his tone going dead.

“Ah, well that’s exactly why I did it,” Peter continues on, but Stiles is hardly listening at this point, “Soup’s alright, but I’m not a cold sandwich fan.”

It doesn’t make him feel better. In fact, the whole thing is so ridiculously stupid that it almost seems to direct a magnifying glass on his present surroundings and the shitty circumstances that brought him here. The camera in the corner of the room — _for your safety_ — has never felt more smothering. He’s never really minded it so much with Peter, because, well, _it’s Peter_ — he wonders not to the first time how the man even _got_ his name on Stiles’ approved visitors list — but the camera’s there for his visits with his dad and Scott and Lydia, with _everyone._

Stiles’ eyes slowly drift back down to the table.

He watches Peter's fingers drum quietly against the cover of a book he hadn’t really paid any mind to before — the title _Brave New World_ stares at him up-side-down from where he's sitting — and Stiles imagines claws sprouting out from those fingertips, turning that faint _thump_ into a _click_. He doesn't even realize Peter's still talking to him until the man stops and the silence is sudden and startling.

Stiles' eyes snap up to meet the wolf's, taking in the analytical look Peter sends him, the look he always has — curious and calculating and intrigued — something that once would have set Stiles on edge, and yet now a small part of him finds comforting simply due to the fact that it's not a look of pity or restrained sorrow that he sees so frequently on the faces of his friends and his father when they come by to visit.

“Sorry,” Stiles mutters, clearing his throat, “were you saying something?”

Peter leans back in his chair; the book abandoned on the table between them as he folds his arms across his chest, and he seems to take a moment to just examine Stiles. He doesn’t speak until Stiles starts shifting restlessly at the silence.

"Rumor has it that you've been having some strange dreams,” the man says.

“Are you even allowed to ask me about that?” Stiles says evasively, because any dream that he’s having in this place is not one he’d like to give too much thought on. “And saying it’s strange doesn’t exactly narrow it down. They’re _all_ pretty strange, so you’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“I think you know what ones I’m talking about,” Peter says.

He does know, because although there have been a _number_ of different dreams that he’s had over the past three months in this place — all of them terrible in their own special way — there’s only one that’s been stuck on repeat in his head each night for the past few weeks or so, and it’s so reminiscent of the dreams he _first_ started having when the nogitsune began its takeover of his body that Stiles had called Scott in a panic because it could be _happening again._

Stiles had then called Lydia to tell her the same thing because as much as he loves his best friend, and despite Scott’s reassurance that he would ‘ _look into it,’_ he knows that Scott can get distracted by other things, and while he certainly doesn’t _blame_ Scott, Stiles also still remembers how Scott had dismissed his original concerns about losing time and writing Kira’s name on the chalkboard as Stiles being sleep-deprived.

He knows that Scott means the best, but what if his friend just thought that Stiles was having what his psychiatrist would call a ‘bad day’? No, it was better to call Lydia too.

He wonders which one of them told Peter.

“They’re nothing,” Stiles finally says, but his conviction is weak at best. They don’t feel like nothing.

"Really? Well, I'd still like to hear about them,” Peter says blithely, like he’s simply asking Stiles about his day, and it reminds Stiles so much of his psychiatrist that he can’t help but scowl.

It also raises a red flag in Stiles’ mind, because why is Peter even here asking about this? It’s true that the man has visited him plenty of times before — something that _still_ baffles him as to _why,_ though Stiles has stopped losing sleep over it after the fourth or fifth visit — but each of those times, Peter had just been stopping by to bring Stiles a book to read, and engage in pointless conversation, talking about things that never held much meaning to Stiles in that usual irritatingly enigmatic _Peter Hale_ way that sometimes made Stiles think the man was up to something, but he could never figure out what.

Yet somehow this particular visit seems… different than all of that.

Different enough for Stiles to ask, "Is something going on?"

"Nothing that you need to concern yourself with,” Peter assures him.

Which means that there’s _definitely_ something going on, something that concerns his dreams, and it suddenly occurs to Stiles that Sunday is usually a day where one of his friends visits him, not Peter. Peter always comes during the weekdays, when his dad is working or his friends are at school.

“Is everyone okay?” he’s almost afraid to ask. He’s a three hour drive from Beacon Hills now. Anything could have happened and he wouldn’t even know. “My dad—“

"They're all fine,” Peter tells him, “and everyone was very adamant about you staying out of it and focusing on getting better."

"Everyone except you,” Stiles says, because it bears pointing out, “since you're here talking to me anyway."

"Yes, well,” Peter hedges, “I've decided to use the whole 'leave Stiles out of it' rule as more of a guideline than anything. And anyway, I'm only here to hear about your dreams; I'd hardly call that 'getting involved.'"

"Um... Okay?" Stiles says slowly, eyes narrowed.

"Just tell me about your dreams,” Peter says, “The ones involving the nemeton. Let me worry about the details."

“It’s really just one dream,” Stiles says, then stops himself, because Peter could very well be on the wrong side of whatever the hell is going on in Beacon Hills. This dream could be important somehow, and he feels like he should at least get some kind of verbal confirmation from Scott or Lydia before he goes telling Creeperwolf all about it.

“I don’t think I should say any more,” Stiles finally settles on.

He searches Peter’s steely blue eyes from something; some kind of reaction, a flash of anger or irritation at not getting what he wants. Stiles sees nothing of the sort though, just the usual cool tones of the man’s gaze.

His own light brown eyes drop back down to the table, “Can I have my book now?”

He glances at the title again. _Brave New World._ He vaguely remembers mention of it in school.

Peter chuckles.

“You still don’t trust me, is that it?” he asks, amused. “Even after all the books I brought you?”

Stiles knows without even having to look up that the man is pouting. For an adult in his thirties, Peter pulls it off well, not that Stiles will ever let him know this, or even give any reaction at all to the man’s antics.

He keeps his eyes on the table, and he wonders how much time Peter has left for his visit.

Peter sighs.

“Why don’t I tell you what _I_ already know about the dream,” Peter offers. “What Lydia herself has divulged to me, because I really _am_ here on official business and not for some ‘nefarious scheme.’”

Stiles looks up, but says nothing. Peter seems to take it as agreement enough anyway.

“You’re standing on the nemeton,” Peter begins. “You said something about it not _looking right._ ”

Because it doesn’t.

It doesn’t look right.

_Grey bleeding into white is scored on its surface, pale whorls spiraling along the nemeton’s bark. There’s something very much wrong with it._

Stiles’ heart thuds in his chest.

“There are people surrounding you,” he can hear Peter say.

“Hundreds of them,” Stiles says, the words slipping out.

_A good chunk of Beacon Hills’ population, really, and the number keeps growing with each dream._

“They’re facing away from you,” Peter goes on, and Stiles finds himself nodding.

“In greyscale,” Stiles mumbles.

“What?”

“The people on the outer edges,” Stiles tells him. “They’re colorless, black and white, like looking at an old photograph.”

_And the grey is growing, stretching inwards towards Stiles, towards the people he cares most about. They’re standing there too. His dad, Melissa, Scott, Lydia, Derek, even Kira, who he had barely gotten the chance to know before all hell broke loose last time around – they’re all standing the closest to the nemeton, their backs to him, staring out into the distance like everyone else._

_And it’s completely silent._

“You said it was bright,” Peter says, drawing him back. “Past the outer edges, you said it was too bright to see.”

“Yeah,” Stiles breathes.

And last night, something had changed.

“They were holding an arm out,” Stiles says, eyes snapping up to Peter.

The man gives him a questioning look, “An arm?”

“Last night, I – in the dream,” Stiles says, “Everyone was holding their arm out in front of them.”

He holds his own arm out to demonstrate; palm down, fingers limp, like he was being led by some invisible force.

“Which arm,” Peter asks. “Right or left?”

Stiles shakes his head, “It was different for everyone.”

Peter leans back in his chair, staring off into the middle-distance with a look of contemplation on his face. Stiles watches him and waits and shifts restlessly in his chair. His eyes dart up to the camera in the corner. He doesn’t imagine there’s much time left for the visit.

After a beat too long of silence, Stiles can’t help but ask, “What do you think it means?”

“That, I’m still working on,” Peter says, frowning, his brows furrowed. He stares at Stiles for a long moment, drums his fingers against the cover of the book. Eventually he shakes his head, coming to some unknown decision, and he slides the copy of _Brave New World_ across the table to Stiles as he stands to leave.

Stiles grabs the man’s sleeve as he passes him by, heading to the door, “Peter, wait!”

He falters under those cool blue eyes, but frustration wins out in the end. He honestly appreciates that Peter even told him anything at all — that he at least _knows_ now that something’s going on back home, since Scott and his dad apparently aren’t going to tell him — but he just wishes Peter weren’t so damn cryptic about it.

“What’s going on back home?” he asks.

Peter smiles at him. He tugs his sleeve from Stiles’ grasp and reaches down past him to tap two fingers against the cover of the book, “Enjoy your book. Let me know what you think the next time I see you.”

And then he’s gone, and a nurse is there in the man’s place to walk Stiles back to the common area, where Stiles sits and wedges himself into the corner of one of the couches, with his face pressed against the cushions and his new book tucked up against his chest, because he’s just so _worried_ about what could be going on back home, and because _Frozen_ is playing yet again on the room’s one television and he can only take so many sing-along renditions of ‘ _Let It Go’_ being belted out by the other patients.

Rec Therapy Group starts up an hour later, but he doesn’t feel in the right mood to participate with the ‘thinking positively’ activity they’ve got going on for the day. The nurse in charge of the group sends him a sympathetic look though, and she lets him sit off quietly by himself. He decides to open the book Peter gave him and start reading.

 

>   
> _"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words,_   
> _CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield,_   
> _the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY…"_

 

Dinner time rolls around at 5 o’clock like always and his group is led over to the dining hall. He ends up at the back of the line; orange plastic tray clutched tightly in his grasp and his book pinned under one arm. It takes about five minutes before he reaches the front and can be served. The cafeteria woman gives him a bland look, probably remembering him from earlier at lunch, and she slides the plate of food over onto his tray.

Chicken pot-pie with a small side-salad and a slice of cornbread.

Stiles stares down at the meal and his fingers itch.

 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _On Sunday they serve macaroni casserole for lunch and Peter shows up for visitor’s hour, which is weird because on Sundays they usually have soup and cold sandwiches for lunch…_  
>  _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn’t mind Peter’s visits. It’s a nice change from Rosenbrook’s usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments, and Peter always leaves him with a good book — but he’s here to get better, to recover, and Peter’s kind of throwing a wrench in those plans when he shows up all ominous and doomsday-y and wants to drag Stiles _back_ to Beacon Hills. Apparently shit’s going down again, and Beacon Hills waits for no one, not even medicated fuck-ups like himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Flashbacks are in italics_
> 
> Most of the flashback scenes will be a lot shorter than this, but the flashbacks in this chapter cover a lot about coping with Allison's death, and Stiles' guilt over the whole thing, so the length seemed necessary.
> 
> Also remember that while this story ignores most of Season 4, it does borrow a few things from it, like Chris and Isaac leaving in this case. 
> 
> Enjoy!

 

**Chapter Two**

_There’s so much **wrong** from the very start that it’s easy to overlook how… affected Stiles is, but chaos, strife, and pain still thrums through the town in aftershocks even after the nogitsune is gone, and Stiles can agree that the dead and dying trump any discomfort he may be experiencing. _

_Everything he’s feeling can be explained with simple enough reasons anyway. That deep inner chill that clings to his bones, not even soothed by a hot shower– it’s shock. The numbness, the detachment, the lingering exhaustion– it’s the sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnourishment. He tells himself that they’re all things that can be fixed with enough time and proper care._

_He tells himself that he deserves it._

_Stiles spends three days on his couch because he can’t stand the sight of his room — the printouts and newspaper clippings and red string webbed throughout — it’s a strong visual reminder of his rapid descent into insanity and possession. He instead stays buried under a pile of blankets, for the most-part sleeping, and with the TV turned on low so that there’s at least some semblance of normalcy playing in the background._

_He vaguely remembers being hooked up to an IV line that first night back and the fact that nobody wanted to bring him to the hospital – the nogistune’s taunts ringing in his head, and he can only imagine what was done there. Aside from that though, he’s been mostly left alone. Everyone is coping in their own way, and they can’t do it around him. His dad checks in on him, makes him soup and frowns and presses a lingering hand to Stiles’ forehead, but the man is swamped cleaning up the mess Stiles made — likely hiding evidence and doing things he never would have done before — and he can never stick around for very long._

_Lydia stops by on the fourth day._

_Even under all of the blankets, he can feel her eyes burning a hole into his back. He doesn’t move though, stays tucked into his protective cocoon, and she doesn’t say anything to him either. He hears the rustling of bags and then the sound of her footsteps going up the stairs and disappearing into his room. He doesn’t know what she’s here for, but he can’t dredge up enough energy to go find out._

_He listens to the distant sounds of her moving about his room, and he slowly drifts out of focus._

_What finally gets him up is a sudden crash, the sound of something falling. It startles him upright, blankets spilling around his lap, and when the silence following the loud noise lingers on for a moment too long, he finds himself rushing up the stairs and down the hall to his room. After everything that has happened, he expects to find so many terrible things when he reaches his doorway — he’s almost relieved when he sees her just standing there. Her clothes are rumpled and her hair is in disarray, but otherwise she looks fine._

_Stiles notices the state of his room next, like a tornado had ripped through the place. Papers have been torn down, red strings now cut and hanging free, and one of his cork boards — likely the source of the loud noise — has been knocked to the ground, its contents spilled out across the floor. All of this only registers to him peripherally though. His focus is on Lydia._

_Her eyes had been on the ground, on the mess, when he’d reached the doorway, but when she notices him there, her lips press into a thin line, and she says, “Sorry.”_

_Stiles just stares at her, uncomprehending._

_Lydia's frown deepens, she shakes her head._

_“No,” she resolves, “No, I’m not sorry.”_

_She seems to struggle. She looks frustrated with herself._

_“But I should be!” she snaps at him. “I should be sorry, because I trashed your room. I was just trying to clean things up at first, but then I just— **I felt** **so** … And I should be sorry, but I’m **not!** ”_

_Stiles doesn’t know what to say, and he feels something curl up unpleasantly in his chest at her words._

_But then Lydia's eyes meet his and she shouts, “I’m not mad at you, Stiles!”_

_She takes a heavy breath and he takes one too. Her eyes shine wet in the dim light, but no tears fall._

_“I’m not,” Lydia repeats firmly. “I’m mad at this whole **goddamn** situation, and this room just… **emphasizes** everything that happened and I **hate** it.”_

_Her expression just kind of… crumbles and her hands curl into fists, a silence stretching out between them._

_So Stiles walks over to his desk and sweeps the pile of papers that was sitting there out onto the floor, and they both stand there staring at the new mess until Stiles admits it himself that, “I hate it too.”_

_Lydia watches him silently as he knocks over a cup of pens next, and from there, it quickly devolves into a free-for-all on his room. They rip red strings from the walls, they tear down papers and shred up whatever research he’d done while in a mind-controlled haze, the last of his cork boards come crashing down, and anything else that’s not important — books, pens, clothes, other random paraphernalia — it all gets knocked down or thrown across the room. Pretty much the only thing that gets left untouched is a family photo with his mother in it. And they don’t stop until Stiles finally rips the pair of scissors free from his mattress and throws them out his open window._

_They’re left standing there, looking down at his mattress and the hole gouged into its surface. Stiles rubs an exhausted hand over his head, mussing his hair up on one side._

_“I could always flip it,” he says with a half-hearted gesture._

_“No,” Lydia says immediately. “No, you need a new mattress.”_

_“It’s fine,” he starts to say, but Lydia cuts him off._

_“ **Stiles** ,” she says forcefully, “how many nightmares have you suffered through on this mattress? How many sleepless nights? How many times did you lay here, tossing and turning and wondering what was real or not?”_

_He stares at her, can’t find the words, because she’s **right.** Looking down at the mattress, he can almost still hear himself screaming awake from all the nightmares, can hear the nogitsune’s whispered words and riddles before he even knew that it was there._

_“Lydia, I can’t afford a new mattress,” he tells her, because ultimately, a lack of money always wins out in the end._

_“Then I’ll buy you one myself,” she says simply._

_“You don’t have to—“_

_“Stiles, it’s **my** money and I can do whatever I want with it!” she says furiously, and once Lydia’s come to a decision about something, it’s pretty much a done deal. _

_She insists on going out to get one that very same day, says that the couch is not an adequate sleeping space and that he needs to sleep on a **real** bed if he’s going to get better. So they clean up the mess they made of his room, end up stuffing three large garbage bags full of trash to leave by the curb, and he soon finds himself trailing after her, bundled up in a thick jacket because he’s still so **cold.**_

_Laying side-by-side with Lydia Martin, testing out new mattresses at the Beacon Hills Mattress Emporium, is something he never would have seen himself doing several months back. It’s all very surreal — but then, **everything’s** been feeling pretty surreal lately, in the most indescribable way, and Lydia keeps asking him what he thinks of each mattress they try out, and he just keeps shrugging and saying something non-committal because he can’t really tell any difference between them and they honestly don’t feel like much of anything and he doesn’t really know what to say to her about that. _

_She sounds frustrated with him at first, but even that seems to drain out of her, and soon they’re just lying there on one of the mattresses, looking up at the store’s white ceiling, and Stiles wouldn’t say the silence between them was awkward, but it was definitely strange. He’s never been able to really put a label on whatever relationship he and Lydia had had before, but whatever it had been, it’s just… different now._

_“So I… saw the photo albums in the backseat of your car,” he finally mumbles, and of all the things he could have said, he doesn’t know why he chooses that. It’s been bugging him though, from the moment he’d noticed the albums there, a picture of Allison’s smiling face peeking out from between the pages._

_“Yeah,” Lydia says, and there’s a beat of silence before she continues, “Mr. Argent is moving. I think Isaac might actually be going with him. They were packing boxes when I went over to Ali—to Mr. Argent’s house.”_

_“Oh…”_

_What else is there that he could really say? It doesn’t surprise him that Allison’s dad is leaving. There’s nothing else keeping the man here. And Stiles supposes he can see why Isaac is leaving too._

_“I went there to ask him about the funeral,” Lydia says, and it’s the very last thing he wants to hear about, but he forces himself to lie there and listen. “He wanted to get it done quick. Get it out of the way, I guess, so that he can leave. He didn’t even want to have a wake…”_

_And here, she pauses to take a breath._

_“I kind of talked him into one,” she says, and she forces out a bitter laugh, “Guess I’m good at getting my way even with stuff like this. Anyway… it’s going to be something small, where everyone can get together and remember her and… say goodbye.”_

_Her voice breaks at the end there, but she clears her throat and pushes forward, her words coming out stronger, “I’m going to make a memory board for the wake. Mr. Argent is letting me borrow the photo albums for it.”_

_“…do you want help?” Stiles asks after a beat, and while he really doesn’t want to, he feels like he owes it to Allison, to Lydia too._

_Lydia rolls over onto her side to face him, and he looks over at her when she does._

_“I wasn’t going to ask you,” she says, “because I know you’re having your own troubles with this all and I didn’t want to push too much on you.” She purses her lips, “You know this isn’t your fault, right?”_

_“…Yeah,” he says, but his voice shakes, and he doesn’t even sound slightly convincing._

_“It’s not,” she says, adamant._

_“I can help you with the memory board,” he says, trying to change the subject, because he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings of guilt surrounding Allison’s death, and the deaths of so many others in Beacon Hills, even Aiden, who he had never liked._

_He remembers Scott telling him the same thing when he’d been driving Stiles home in the aftermath of that night at the school. ‘You know it’s not your fault, right? Because I know how you think, Stiles, and none of this is your fault.’ And Stiles had just nodded, said nothing out-loud because he knew Scott would hear the lie in his heartbeat._

_He hasn’t told anyone how much he remembers. He hasn’t told them how at night, he has dreams of killing Allison, of kidnapping Lydia, of doing all the things the nogitsune had done even after they were separated. Stiles honestly doesn’t feel like he should even be allowed to go to the funeral, but he knows that to not show up at all would somehow be worse._

_Lydia studies him carefully, obviously looking for something, but Stiles doesn’t know what. Eventually she nods and says, “Alright, you can help me with the board. We can put it together after we pick out your bed.”_

_Right, the mattress, which Stiles still doesn’t really feel anything from. Not soft, or squishy, or firm, it’s just… it’s just a mattress._

_“This one is fine,” he settles on, and Lydia nods and calls over the salesclerk to finalize the transaction. The place delivers and takes away the old mattress too, so they don’t need to worry about the details._

_An hour later, they’re in Lydia’s living room with a large photo board propped up against the wall and pictures scattered about the floor among three thick photo albums. They end up inviting Scott and Isaac over, because it wouldn’t feel right otherwise._

_Stiles sits in a corner of the room, his back against the wall as he cuts out decorative paper borders for the photos that will go up on the board. Scott and Isaac are sitting on the floor themselves, neither boy really talking as they sort through the many photos on the ground, picking out the best ones. Lydia has some of her own pictures of Allison, and she’s in the process of printing them off her computer. There’s one of Allison with her bow and arrow on hand, a sunny smile on her face, and Lydia’s printing out a large copy of it to be the focal point of the memory board._

_Stiles watches them all, the grief on their faces, the tears they’re holding back, he can’t look away, and it all just leaves him… numb._

_He doesn’t even realize his hand had slipped with the scissors until he hears Scott say, “Dude, you’re bleeding.”_

_Stiles startles back to himself. His eyes dart down and it takes him a moment to comprehend the blood welling up on one of his fingers._

_“Oh,” he says._

_“You need to be more careful,” Scott says, his brows furrowed in concern._

_Stiles wraps one hand around the bleeding finger and squeezes tight._

_Even now, he only distantly feels the cut._

 

* * *

Stiles realizes about five seconds after he throws the chair that it was probably a bad idea, and from there, the regrets start flooding in.

He’s been a _good_ patient up until this point. He eats at every meal, he’s been taking all his medications as directed and talks to his psychiatrist when he’s called in for a session _—_ he even goes to all the group therapies, which aren’t mandatory to attend. Sure, he doesn’t always talk during group time, or participate in every activity, but he’s _there._ He’s _trying._ He really does want to get better, or at least reach a point where he doesn’t feel like he needs to be in a place like this.

And now he’s fucked it all up, and what if they call his _dad?_ He’d be so disappointed – not so much _with_ Stiles, he knows, but just disappointed in general that this happened, like Stiles relapsed, or like he’s worse off than his dad thought.

It had all just escalated so quickly, and he wishes he could say that he didn’t mean to, but he _did, he did mean to,_ and he almost feels justified in doing so even though he can hardly understand _why._

It had been just your regular morning group therapy session. They’d been going around the circle like usual and everyone was talking about what they were hoping to accomplish for the day, or talking about how they were feeling, and then it came time for _Jim’s_ turn, and apparently Jim had been out for a week seeking alternative care at another facility. Stiles hadn’t even noticed the older teen’s absence until the therapist pointed it out, asking Jim how his trip went and if he’d like to share any of it with the group.

Stiles wouldn’t have even cared to listen about the details of Jim’s trip had the older teen not opened his mouth and immediately started talking about how _fantastic_ his treatment at _Eichen House_ went. It wasn’t even said in a sarcastic way. No, Jim was _over-the-fucking-moon_ about _Eichen House._ He was smiling and laughing and talking about how _great_ his experience had been and that he wished he could _go back._

Stiles had never been the type of person to be unsettled by overly happy people – hell, before all the werewolf and nogitsune shit, he’d been a pretty happy person himself – but this was different. Stiles may not have noticed Jim’s absence, but he did remember Jim from before, and the Jim from before would stand in a corner and mutter angrily to himself and shout over at anyone singing along to _Frozen_ to _“Shut up already, goddammit!”_

This mockery of happiness sitting next to Stiles was _not_ the same Jim he remembered from a week ago, and as Jim went on and on about how _great_ he felt and how _happy_ he was, and – _Beacon Hills is such a lovely town, aren’t you from there, Stiles? I don’t know how you could ever stand to leave –_ a chill had raced up Stile’s spine, and he’d suddenly realized how entirely _too close_ Jim was sitting next to him.

_Too close, so close that all Jim had to do was reach out and—_

_Stay away, stay away, STAY AWAY!_

And then Stiles had stumbled back and away from the older teen’s outstretched hand and thrown his chair.

And he’s standing in a corner of the room now with his back pressed to the wall. The rest of the group stands across the room from him, watching him, and an orderly – _Frank,_ Stiles vaguely remembers – is standing in front of Stiles. The man’s hand is holding Stiles’ upper arm, grasp gentle but firm, and there’s a nurse standing on Frank’s left and the therapist in charge of the group is on Frank’s right. She’s speaking to Stiles in a calm tone, and she’s asking him questions, but Stiles hardly hears any of it because he’s too busy staring over Frank’s shoulder at _Jim,_ the one he threw the chair at.

_Jim,_ who’s still _smiling,_ like what the fuck is he so happy about, he just got a chair thrown at him—

“Stiles—“

“Just keep him away from me,” Stiles says, and he doesn’t realize how shaky he is until he actually talks.

“You mean Jim?” the therapist clarifies, and Stiles nods his head rapidly.

“Just—just don’t let him near me,” he says, pressing his back even tighter against the wall.

She frowns, but also looks concerned, “Would you like to go back to your room for now?”

“Y—yeah,” his eyes never leave Jim.

“Frank—“

“I got it,” Frank says, and he tugs Stiles along. “Come on, kid.”

He’s led back to his room and eventually left alone – or as left alone as you can be when there are nurses and orderlies walking by every fifteen minutes. He sits in the corner of his bed with his side pressed against the wall and his eyes on the open doorway, and he tries to calm himself down using the various breathing exercises they taught him. He finds himself looking up at the ceiling every now and then, something he used to do all the time when he’d first got here —checking for flies and other unwanted things.

He doesn’t even have the book Peter gave him to distract himself with because about two days in to having it, a nurse who had actually _read_ the book saw him with it and had promptly confiscated it, scowling at the cover the whole time like she thought it would corrupt him or something – which really seems typical of something Peter Hale would give him.

He’s not surprised when he’s called in for an early session with his psychiatrist.

He’s not even surprised when they decide to adjust his current medications and add another new prescription in with his daily dose. In fact, Stiles kind of agrees with them about the change, because he can’t even explain it himself why he threw the chair or why _happy Jim_ had unnerved him so much. Maybe it was a side effect of what he was already on. Maybe a change would help.

After all, part of the whole reason he’s here to begin with is to find out what combination of medications will work best for him in letting him feel normal again

Or at least that’s what everyone keeps telling him.

Stiles dreams about the nemeton again that night—

_The number of people surrounding him is in the thousands now. They’re all still facing away from him, one arm stretched out, completely silent._

_His dad and Melissa and all his friends have gone grey._

_He’s the only one left._

* * *

_Stiles wishes he could say more about Allison’s funeral and wake, but it’s a short, private affair and for the most part, he stays off to the side. He **goes**_ _is the fact of the matter, even when it feels like he shouldn’t, he shows up to support his friends and he tries not to think about how he’s probably the **last** person Chris Argent wants to see. _

_The memory board ends up turning out really well, and Chris probably stands in front of it and stares at it the longest. A lot of kids from school show up to the wake to pay their respects, though Stiles isn’t sure how many of them actually knew Allison. It’s not his place to dwell though._

_During the actual funeral, Stiles sits in the back row despite all his friends sitting up front. It’s… it’s the most he can bring himself to do. His dad sits next to him, a steady hand on Stiles’ shoulder as the ceremony starts, though he hardly notices it there._

_And he forces himself to look at the coffin Allison’s in, lilies adorning its dark oak surface. He forces himself to watch his friends as they rapidly lose it throughout the ceremony – forces himself to watch as the tears finally fall from Chris Argent’s eyes, the man’s face remaining controlled and steely even in his grief._

_Distantly, Stiles notices how his own vision blurs as tears track down his face, dripping from his chin onto his folded hands. He stares blankly ahead and his dad squeezes his shoulder._

_The funeral doesn’t feel real._

_Stiles doesn’t feel like he’s actually sitting there watching it all._

_He shivers at the deep chill that hasn’t yet gone away._


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Peter Hale is dressed as an orderly..._  
>  _Stiles is about 98% sure that this isn't going to end well. ___  
> _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

 

**Chapter Three**

_It was raining when he stabbed Scott. Stiles remembers that, he remembers the rain. He remembers being soaked through, with his hair flattened to his head and cool water dripping off his chilled flesh — pat, pat, pat as it hit the tiled floor._

_He remembers how smoothly the blade slid through Scott — remembers the ease of it all as he twisted and fucked the blade into his best friend's abdomen. Stiles remembers how Scott's shudder traveled up the katana and into his palm — and the pat, pat, pat of Scott's dripping blood._

_It wasn't raining when Allison died, the night skies were clear, and everything had been so quiet, with the chirp of crickets in the distance broken only by the sounds of fighting, of blades flying. It could almost be considered peaceful _—_ not at all fitting for what was about to happen _—_ sometimes he thinks rain would have been more appropriate. When he dreams about it, when he dreams of her death, sometimes he's standing off to the side watching it, just as the nogitsune had been, but sometimes he's the one holding the blade, thrusting it forward as she spins to meet him, her dark hair sweeping over her cheeks as the katana pierces through her and shock transforms her face _—_ those Disney Princess eyes going wide as her mouth drops open in a gasp. The life drains out of her so quick — pat, pat, _ _**pat** _ _— and Stiles imagines standing over her to catch her last breath._

_It's raining now, but he hardly feels it._

_He's standing out at the edge of the preserve, his final destination after an hour of aimless driving, and the shirt he's wearing is the same one he wore when he put together the bomb that eventually got sent to the Sheriff's Station. The wet fabric clings to him so tightly that he wishes it would just strangle him already._

_The sky is growing darker as dusk approaches._

_It had been his first day back to school that day, and he couldn't even make it through the full day without making a quick excuse to get out of class and go hide in the library. He really felt like he'd been doing well, but then he'd heard a buzzing and realized that a fly had gotten into the room and he just—_

_He'd skipped the rest of his classes, but didn't go home, because going home would have been too much of a defeat. Instead, he'd stuck around the library, telling himself that at least he was at school, and he'd made plans to see all his teachers by the end of the day to get his homework assignments. Kira was actually the one who found his hiding place, but after several assurances that he was fine, she'd left him alone._

_He'd bailed on the first lacrosse practice for the season, and he knows Scott would worry, but…_

_This thing is, what's left of his friends, they're trying to move on. They're trying to act like things are getting back to normal and Stiles just — he_ _**can't.** _ _He's trying, but he can't. Sometimes he wants to just leave like Isaac and Chris had left, but somehow he doesn't feel like that would really help._

 _Because everything that happened, it plagues him twenty-four-seven, and just leaving isn't going to make that go away – it isn't going to stop him from thinking about it, from playing it out in his mind, the things he had done, the things he had been_ _**forced** _ _to do — and he just feels like—_ _**he feels so** _ _—_

_It's raining when Peter Hale pulls Stiles hands away from where he had been clawing at his own arms. Stiles hadn't even noticed the werewolf's approach – hadn't even realized how he'd been scratching at his own flesh hard enough to draw blood, and he feels the heat from the man's hands wrapped tightly around his wrists more than he can feel the fresh sting of pain._

_It's raining when Stiles finally puts words to what's been_ _**digging** _ _at him for over a week now._

" _I don't feel right."_

_He's numb, he's drifting unattached, like he might just vanish if Peter lets go, and he finds himself reaching forward to grip at the wolf's sodden shirt. He doesn't know if his shivering is from the cold or from something else entirely._

_He doesn't know how to feel real again._

 

* * *

Stiles takes his pills in the mornings and thinks about them bubbling in his brain chemistry like a fizzy drink — sticky carbonation sinking into the folds and creases and melding with his receptors — picking different flavors and brands until the right one works and his brain lets out a refreshed sigh of satisfaction.

Cherry flavored Coca Cola with a tablet of diet Pepsi and ten milligrams of Sprite.

One, two, three little pills every morning.

Then one little pill at night — half a dose of root beer to help with the nightmares.

 _This is just an adjustment period,_ they tell him.

 _We're thinking about upping your dose of diet Pepsi and switching the Cherry Cola out with Orange Crush to see if that will help you,_ they say, although he could be paraphrasing.

 _Tell me how you're feeling_ , his psychiatrist always asks him.

He feels like… maybe _Let It Go_ could actually be growing on him again. Hell, if _happy Jim_ can get into it, then why can't Stiles? (Though Stiles feels it should be mentioned that _happy Jim_ is to still keep a distance of _at least_ three couch cushions away from him at all times, and all the orderlies and nurses are well aware of this fact by now).

It's a Wednesday.

At least, he _thinks_ it's a Wednesday, because they served tacos for lunch, and unless the hospital for some reason decided to just say ' _fuck It'_ to the whole menu like they did that one unexplainable Sunday, then Stiles is pretty sure he can still rely on the meal plan to tell him what day of the week it is.

Anyway, for a Wednesday, overall it's been a fairly good day. His headache has been minimal, completely manageable as his day progresses, and his vision has only briefly blurred out a few times so far. He's been told that this is normal. Just minor side effects, because _this is an adjustment period,_ remember?

He is adjusting. Yes.

He is in a perpetual state of _adjustment,_ to one day emerge from his chrysalis of _crazy_ as a completely sane and functioning member of society, which isn't how they worded it, but it's how he's come to regard it in his mind, and he's hoping that reality will at least _slightly_ match up with his assumptions on how this whole medication and therapy thing will go down.

He could do without the nausea though.

…He does kind of like the drowsiness. Sleep has been hard to come by since the nogitsune, even with a new bed to sleep on back home, but it's most especially been difficult since he got here, and the drowsiness makes it easier to just drop off into a nap, even when he's sitting in the common area, and unless he's missing out on something important, the nurses and orderlies leave him be.

At morning group, he had refrained from throwing chairs, which makes that seven days in a row now of no chair-throwing — _self-high-five!_ — and he'd set his daily goal of trying to feel more present, which he thinks he may be accomplishing pretty well right now. Slouched into the couch cushions, hugging a small pillow to his chest with his legs tucked up against him and feeling the press of fabric as he mouths the words to _Let It Go,_ he feels like he's actually sitting there watching the movie — so yes, a pretty good day overall.

There Elsa goes again, throwing away that crown.

_'You're your own queen, let your hair down and be free – that's right, work that dress.'_

Stiles certainly wouldn't mind an ice kingdom of his own to hide away in.

"Stiles."

The voice is too young to be a nurse or an orderly — thirteen maybe, definitely a girl from his group therapy sessions — so he ignores her, keeps his eyes fixed on the TV screen. He feels too weighted down anyway, his limbs full of lead, like the couch has formed its own separate gravitational pull and he's stuck in it, so if she's looking for a place to sit, she'll have to look elsewhere.

Elsewhere.

Else.

Elsa.

_Frozen._

" _Stiles."_

Oh, right.

He rolls his head sideways, towards the intruder, but still doesn't look away from the movie playing.

"I'm marinating," he tells her, "Leave me to my diet _Wicked._ I'm trying to cleanse the aftertaste the Sprite and Pepsi left on my brain this morning."

He knows of a few people in this place that would punch him for the 'diet Wicked' comment, and he's kind of hoping that she's not one of them.

There's a baffled silence, which is pretty much what he's aiming for, and he thinks he may have _won_ up until the moment when she steps in front of him and blocks his view of the TV. _Jenny,_ he vaguely recalls, here for some sort of bipolar disorder if he's remembering right.

Jenny, who would _totally_ punch him for the 'diet Wicked' comment. Whoops.

And, yup, there it is, that 'irritated at Stiles' look. She pulls it off like a true master.

"One of the orderlies wants to see you," she says with an annoyed huff and a quick gesture off to the side, and Stiles is about to huff right back at her that if an orderly wants to see him, they can come over and talk to him themselves — when he actually turns his head and _looks_ in the direction she had pointed and—

_Oh._

Peter Hale is dressed as an orderly.

Stiles blinks.

Peter Hale is dressed as an orderly and is currently standing inconspicuously off to the side, right near the entrance leading out to one of the main hallways. The man meets his eyes across the room, a small smirk on his face, and with a subtle jerk of his head, he gestures for Stiles to follow him out into the hallway.

Instinct tells Stiles that he should stay sitting right where he is. Following Peter anywhere alone has proven to be detrimental to one's health (though Stiles feels like if Peter really wanted to do something to him, he could have done it easily a dozen times over by now). There's also the fact that in his current curled up position, Stiles has managed to deter his ever-present nausea from bothering him for a period of time and he feels like if he moves now, there's a chance it might all come rushing back, and he'd rather avoid that.

But Peter is still staring at him, this expectant look on his face, and that smirk fades into an impatient frown. Stiles is half-tempted to tell Peter to come carry him out if he wants to see him so badly, since he knows the wolf will hear him from across the room, but Jenny is watching them both now with this suspicious look on her face.

And despite Stiles' qualms, he has to admit he's a little curious about Peter's unexpected presence, considering how their last conversation had gone, and nothing's going to happen if he just stays sitting there.

It could be important. Peter wouldn't run the risk of getting caught impersonating hospital staff if it wasn't.

Setting the small pillow to the side, Stiles drags himself up from the couch. He pauses for a moment, checks himself for any sign of his nausea coming back, but no, so far so good, and he crosses the room. He doesn't even care that Jenny immediately steals his seat when he leaves.

Peter smiles at him when Stiles reaches him, keeping up appearances for anyone watching as he says, "Stiles, dear, your psychiatrist wants to see you for a check-up."

"Is that what we're calling this?" Stiles says, eyebrows raised.

But Peter has no time for his snark apparently, just takes Stiles by the sleeve and leads him out of the common area, down the hallway past the group therapy rooms and some of the psychiatrists' offices. Stiles doesn't know what the man could possibly be here for, but he doubts it's for anything good.

After the silence between them stretches on for a moment too long, Stiles finally blurts out, "This isn't like, another kidnapping/dead nurse in the trunk thing, is it?"

Peter tosses him a wry smile and rolls his eyes, "Stiles, _please,_ that was one time, and I had very good reasons for it."

Stiles feels like he could easily debate that point, but as Peter tugs him along down the halls, anything he may have said in protest dries up immediately when they reach a door that he's most definitely _not_ allowed through and Peter pulls out a _fucking keycard_ to unlock it.

"Wait— _what?_ " Stiles pulls back against the werewolf's grip, digging his heels in as he's dragged through the now open doorway. His heartbeat picks up in his chest. "What's going on?"

"I regret to inform you that the situation in Beacon Hills has… _escalated_ ," Peter tells him, his tone all formal even as he forces Stiles along and speeds up their pace. "And as much as I'd like to stop and explain everything, we're on a bit of a time crunch."

The time crunch obviously being how long it will take before someone realizes that Stiles is gone, or before someone looks at the cameras and sees the _strange orderly_ leading a patient through unauthorized zones of the hospital—

There's the nausea, right on cue, and his once minor headache flares back up, not one to be outdone. Stiles half hunches in on himself, presses his free hand to his forehead as he attempts to keep up with Peter, and all at once his breaths are coming in too quick and short — because it sounds like Peter wants him to _go back._

This isn't just another visit, this is Peter showing up to drag him out of his safe haven. And that's exactly what it is, despite his grumbling complaints about the place and his anger at himself for even having to be here at all, it's a _safe haven_ for him, and Peter wants to take him away from it before he feels even _close_ to ready, and back to _Beacon Hills_ of all places.

Stiles can't even fathom what sort of crisis could be so bad in Beacon Hills that Peter is coming to _him_ for back-up — _**him**_ _, Stiles Stilinski,_ the useless, _neurotic_ human of their pack who can barely function on a day-to-day basis. Stiles thinks of their last conversation, he thinks about the dreams he's _still_ having, but his mind is too muddled to handle any of this and he can't even _begin_ to think about what could be going on — and who's to say Peter's come to him for backup? Stiles could be bait, or cannon fodder, or—

Stiles stumbles, his vision blurs out momentarily and he grasps at Peter's arm.

Peter quickly pushes them both into a supply closet, flipping on the light and shutting the door behind them. Stiles sinks to his knees, hunches over with his eyes to the floor, only vaguely aware of Peter rustling around with something on the supply closet's shelves. Listening to the man, trying to focus on the shifting sounds and on the feel of his own hands curled up against the cool tiles, Stiles sucks in a couple of slow breaths.

He feels woozy.

"You took your medicine this morning?" Peter asks, and Stiles is just thankful that the man isn't telling him to ' _get ahold of yourself',_ like that would actually help.

"Yeah," Stiles breathes out, shaking.

"Then I can't give you your next dose just yet," Peter says, and _that_ give Stiles pause.

" _What?"_

"Your panic disorder," Peter explains, "The PTSD, the depersonalization—"

"You've been reading my file," Stiles distantly notes.

Why is he not surprised?

"I'll admit that springing this all on you isn't the most _ideal_ situation," Peter says, "but I'm not pulling you out of here without at least _some_ forethought."

Stiles hears the very distinct rattle of several pill bottles – the various medications he's being kept on, most likely – and from the sounds of it, there's a lot of them. He wonders just how long Peter expects him to be home for. More than that though, Stiles wonders again what he's going back to. He can't stop his thoughts from flying back to everything he's dealt with so far — a crazy alpha Peter himself, the kanima, Matt, the Alpha Pack, the Darach, the… the _nogitsune —_ Stiles' head pounds and his breath hitches because, god, what could possibly be next?

When Peter kneels down next to him and carefully cups Stiles' face with one hand, lifting his head so that brown eyes meet blue, Stiles feels like it's something happening far off and to someone else, and when Peter speaks, tones low and gentle as he murmurs words meant to calm, Stiles only faintly hears it.

" _I'm not one to comfort, but you're going to be fine, Stiles. Alright? It's going to be okay,_ " he thinks the man says, or at least some variation of that.

And then Peter reaches out with his other hand to rest it against Stiles' shoulder, fingertips tucking under the collar of Stiles' shirt to touch bare skin, and the man's grip against him tenses just-so-slightly before Stiles sees, out of the corner of his eye, black traveling up the veins on Peter's arms and quite abruptly the headache fades and the nausea goes with it and Stiles is left feeling drained, not just of pain, but of everything in general.

"You with me?" Peter is saying.

Stiles nods, and Peter frowns at the non-verbal response.

"In a sense, then?" Peter asks, and Stiles nods again. Peter sighs, "It'll have to do."

Stiles doesn't move when Peter stands, just focuses on his breathing as it slows to something more controlled, and he watches on with a vague sort of curiosity as Peter digs out a duffle bag from where it had been tucked away on a shelf full on cleaning supplies.

"Now, I'm going to have to be an asshole here," Peter says, "and tell you that we don't have much time and that I'll need you to get dressed."

He drops the duffle bag down next to Stiles, and there's the rattle of pill bottles that Stiles had heard earlier coming from inside the bag, but next to a clear Ziploc bag full of his medication, there are clothes. Specifically, there are clothes from home — jeans and a t-shirt and hoodie, sneakers with actual shoelaces.

Stiles reaches into the bag and runs his fingers over the hoodie. It isn't one that he'd worn when possessed. In fact, _none_ of the clothes are ones that he'd been wearing when the nogitsune had been running his body ragged, and for the first time, Stiles wonders just how much Peter has been paying attention to him.

" _Stiles."_

Right… _right,_ they—

They need to go. They don't know how much time they have before someone notices he's gone, or before someone thinks back and realizes that Peter isn't an orderly that's ever been seen in the hospital before.

Stiles takes a breath.

He sheds his hospital clothes and pulls on his street clothes. He's drifting again, his movements mechanical and distant. He doesn't even care that he pretty much just gave Peter Hale a strip show.

He can't believe he's doing this. He can't believe he's breaking out of the psychiatric hospital he'd just spent the past three, nearly four, months in — and is running right back to the place that had caused his breakdown to begin with, following the lead of his sociopathic werewolf acquaintance, of all things.

Peter collects up the duffle bag, shoving Stiles' hospital clothes inside next to the bag of pills. With the duffle bag slung over one shoulder, Peter grabs his hand and quickly leads him out of the supply closet, down the winding hallways. Nobody stops them, they don't run into anyone unexpectedly like you always see in the movies — it's kind of hard to sneak up on a werewolf when they can hear you coming a mile away — and Stiles doesn't even fight it.

He's a balloon, floating along, tethered to Peter's hand.

Even Elsa had to go back to Arendelle eventually — though she was dragged back against her will too, now that he thinks about it.

An _Exit_ sign has never looked more menacing.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC
> 
> My only experience with anti-anxiety medicine thus far is that one time I had a panic attack and thought I was dying and ended up going to the ER, and they gave me a shot of something that chilled me way-the-fuck down like almost instantly. I'm basing Stiles' experience partly on that, so apologies for any inaccuracies about his medication experience.
> 
> Stiles isn't being given any kind of injections like what I was given, because his doctors are trying to get him set up on something he'd take regularly that would stabilize him, and the kind of stuff I was given wouldn't be given to someone regularly because that can lead to all sorts of addiction problems and they're trying to help Stiles, not make it worse. I purposely haven't listed any specific medication he's been given, because I'm no expert and I don't know what could safely be mixed, but I'd read the common side-effects of a number of different kinds of medications people are given for anxiety problems, and I picked out some of the side-effects that showed up the most often between them all.
> 
> Feel free to correct me on any inaccuracies regarding the whole medication thing. The more I learn about it, the more I can improve my writing on the matter.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated! :)


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _That car definitely does_ not _belong to Peter._
> 
> _Stiles is also a little concerned that the kid sitting in the backseat has been kidnapped and that he might have just made himself an unwilling accomplice._
> 
> _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

 

* * *

 

 

**Chapter Four**

_Cremation ash._

_That's what his body reminds Stiles of when he sees it crumble into dust, and he's ashamed to say that_ _ **that's**_ _the dream that haunts him the most — even more than killing Allison, than stabbing Scott, or kidnapping Lydia, even more than all the terrible things he had done or watched himself do _—_ it's the dream, the memory of watching his body disintegrate into nothing that keeps him up at night. _

_It happens so rapidly, the cracks forming on his cheeks as his body's eyes go dead, and then he watches himself falling, hitting the ground and just_ _**shattering** _ __—_ ashes spilling out along floor. _

_It stops his heart, and in the dream he doesn't get the mercy of passing out, but instead is left standing there_ _**horrified.** _ _He falls to his knees and reaches out with trembling hands, scrambling to gather together the ash, but it's too late._

_It's gone, vanished, swept away so that nothing's left._

_And his breath hitches and he can't_ _**breathe.** _

_Waking brings no relief, because even as he smothers his sobs with hands clamped tight over his mouth and calms his rapid breaths, the guilt is quick to sweep over his mind._

_Because he_ _**is** _ _a terrible person, and he's upset that he's even upset by the memory. People are_ _**dead** _ __—_ people are dead because of _ _**him** _ __—_ _ _**that's** _ _what should be tormenting him the most, not anything having to do with his body, with himself personally. He shouldn't be_ _**allowed** _ _to be this bothered by it because at least he's still alive._

_Even when he feels like maybe he shouldn't be…_

* * *

 

Stiles doesn't recognize the car when they finally reach it _—_ parked at the _very_ far end of the hospital parking lot, and out of sight of any outdoor security cameras, Stiles is sure. It's a silver minivan, a soccer mom's car, and there's those stick-figure stickers on the back window that people use to show off their whole family _—_ a mom, a dad, three stick-figure kids, and a little stick-figure cat—

' _Stolen,'_ he thinks faintly, ' _that car is stolen.'_

And when Peter walks him around the minivan to the passenger's side door and Stiles sees that there's someone _already_ sitting in the backseat, he thinks that maybe Peter kidnapped some kid – possibly even took him when he took the car, like a two-for-one deal. The boy looks young _—_ still high school age, but most likely a freshman _—_ and he's no one that Stiles knows.

For a moment, Stiles wonders if it had all been a trick _—_ that maybe there isn't actually anything wrong with Beacon Hills and Peter had in fact lured him out here for some ulterior motive, like having him aid in the kidnapping of this kid, unintentionally or not. Though technically he's being kidnapped himself, isn't he? Even if that's not how he sees it in his head, he knows that's how the police will see it when they watch the security tapes.

He breathes out sharply. It's too much to think about, and he already feels so far out of his depth. He doesn't even realize that he's swaying until Peter grips his upper arms tightly, guiding him to the van even as he drags his feet.

"Who's that?" Stiles asks, so quietly that he wonders for a moment if Peter even heard him. His eyes never leave the boy.

"I may have picked up a stray along the way," Peter says, completely nonchalant, "Poor little thing was just wandering the streets alone."

Then the boy sees them _,_ and any thoughts of a possible kidnapping quickly fade from Stiles' mind when the boy's face twists into an expression that's not fear, but _incredulous disbelief._ It's not the face of a kidnapping victim, and this fact is further emphasized when the boy actually _gets out_ of the van, because Stiles knows that if Peter had kidnapped _anyone,_ he definitely wouldn't leave them behind in the get-away vehicle without at least tying them up first.

"Oh my god," the kid says, a hand pressed to his forehead like he can't even _believe—_ " _Oh my god!_ I thought you were just going to ask him a question, not _break him out of the hospital!_ " his voice rises in pitch towards the end there, even almost _squeaks,_ and if Stiles were feeling more himself, he'd call the boy _adorable._

Peter sends the boy an amused look, one eyebrow quirked as he says, "Who said I broke him out of the hospital?"

"So you went through actual official channels and got him released?" the boy asks incredulously, like he doesn't believe that for a _second_.

"No, I broke him out," Peter says, gesturing at the orderly clothes that he is quite clearly still wearing, and the man has such a lofty look on his face when he adds, "I just don't think people should be so quick to jump to conclusions."

The angry look this kid shoots Peter says that he clearly disagrees with anything the man says, and there's a kind of distrust and irritation there that makes Stiles realize that this boy _knows_ Peter, knows him well enough to apparently question his actions no matter the circumstances _—_ there's a kind of familiarity to it that makes Stiles think of _pack._

Stiles stares at the kid, brows furrowed, and when he finally catches the kid's eyes, he manages to mumble out the words, "Who are you?"

The kid's mouth clamps shut around whatever words he'd been about to snap at Peter, and he looks at Stiles like he _knows_ him, which… should be impossible, right?

"I'm Liam, Scott's—"

"—new beta," Stiles says, realization sinking in, "Yeah, I—I remember him saying something about that."

Remember it? How could he forget the story Scott had told him about the kid that had gotten caught in the crossfire of a wendigo/werewolf showdown _—_ who Scott had needed to bite to save his life. Scott finally turns his first beta, albeit under extreme duress, and Stiles isn't even there for it. Looking at this kid, a glaring physical reminder of exactly how much has been going on while he's been away, how much he's apparently missed, Stiles almost feels like he's wilting away under the force of it all — Peter's hands on his arms being the only thing keeping him present.

He wonders if this is how parents feel when they miss _baby's first steps._

' _Baby's first transformation.'_

' _Baby's first full moon-fueled blood-rage.'_

"Yeah," Liam says, looking ruffled and annoyed as he fixes a glare back over Stiles' shoulder where Peter is standing, "And you're his crazy best friend."

It's said so absentmindedly — the 'crazy' part — not at all intentionally malicious, but it still… it _stings._ Not so much the word, but just the fact that that's Liam's impression of him. It makes him wonder just what people are saying about him back home, what his friends could be saying…

Stiles is drawn from his thoughts when he feels Peter go tense behind him, and from the corner of his eye, he could swear he saw the man's eyes flare icy blue at the younger beta wolf. When Stiles actually turns to look though, Peter's eyes are normal and he even has a pleasant smile on his face, a pleasant smile that is zeroed in on Liam with a kind of laser focus.

"' _Crazy'_ is not the politically correct term," Peter says, his tone light.

Stiles frowns. It's… strange. But at the very least, Liam has the decency to look shamefaced.

"Sorry," Liam says, and he actually does sound sorry, "I mean, you're his friend who's… having some health problems." And then Liam turns his attention back to Peter once more, his voice becoming heated again as he says, "And who is also _supposed_ to be staying here to get better, according to everyone else back home."

"It's not like they're about to stop me, are they?" Peter says, completely unconcerned, and Liam seems to get especially tense at those words, his eyes flashing gold for the briefest second.

"It's, uh, it's okay," Stiles says, before anything can start up too badly between the two. He hasn't really gotten a sense of how Peter feels about Liam, but Liam clearly doesn't like Peter. He's sure Scott didn't give the man a glowing review, not that Stiles really would either, all things considered, but still…

Stiles scratches a hand through his mussed hair, his fingers limp with the slightest tremor. He hadn't really put the effort into brushing it today. He finally shakes his head, saying, "I'm kinda used to getting dragged into Beacon Hills' usual messes even when I'm not at my best."

He feels like he should be angry about that _—_ being dragged into yet another Beacon Hills shit-storm _—_ or be angry about the opinions everyone at home likely has about him now, about Liam's words even in spite of his apology, but instead he's just… tired, in every way a person can _be_ tired. He hadn't been flopped over on the couch earlier just because he'd been bored – his med changes have really thrown him for a loop, and he doesn't even know if the dosage is right for him because he's leaving before his doctor can figure it out.

Distantly, he's aware of how stupid that is, dangerous even, but Beacon Hills waits for no one, not even medicated fuck-ups like himself.

So in the end, he just gives a shaky sigh and says, "Anyway, crazy is… pretty accurate, so that's fine too."

Peter is frowning at him _—_ almost looks like he wants to disagree _—_ but Stiles _doesn't care,_ because his legs feel weak and unsteady now, and one of his hands has reached back to grip the front of Peter's shirt, which Stiles doesn't remember doing _at all_ , and at this point he really just wants to sit down and take a moment to zone out completely, at least for a little while.

Peter must have picked up on some of this though, because the man walks him the last few steps over to the front passenger's seat of the van, keeping whatever words he may have to himself, and he reaches over Stiles' shoulder to open the door for him. Secretly, Stiles is thankful for the help, because he's not too sure he could quite manage it all on his own at this very moment.

"Hey, wait," Liam says, affronted, "Why does he get to sit in the front seat?"

The look Peter tosses over his shoulder at the boy is pure Hale sass, and as he helps Stiles into the front seat of the van, even going as far as buckling Stiles in, the man says, "I like him. _You,_ I barely know."

He punctuates his point perfectly by slamming the passenger's side door closed — always one with a flair for theatrics.

Stiles tunes out their now muffled voices as they snap at each other outside the van doors, and he thinks he may have drifted off for a moment because the next thing he knows, Peter's sitting in the driver's seat and Liam's in the back, and Peter has a steady hand on Stiles' shoulder as he leans in close to ask, "Do you want your seat reclined?"

It's something Stiles can admit, at least to himself, that he likes about the man, or at the very least appreciates — the way Peter speaks to him at times like this, casually and with normal tones, or snarky if the moment calls for it. Calmly at times, yes, but never _so delicately._ Though the man's actions may sometimes say otherwise, not once in the entire time following the Nogtsune's banishment has Peter spoken to him like he's some fragile thing that might break.

"No, I'm good," Stiles mumbles, preferring to stay upright so that he can see outside, keep track of where they're going. He stares back at the hospital as they pull out of the parking lot, watching as the large gray building disappears in the distance, and he wonders if anyone's noticed him missing yet — how long it will take before they call the police, and then his dad.

He wonders just how bad Beacon Hills is and if his dad will even be able to take any kind of call from the hospital. Because the thing is, Stiles can understand Peter dragging him into the thick of things when nobody else will – after all, Peter's done it to him before – but Liam being here and clearly _disagreeing_ with Peter's plan to involve Stiles, but _still being here_ nonetheless, that doesn't make any sense, and he doesn't know what it means.

Fatigue drags at him though, and he can't find it in himself to think about the situation with the usual amount of fervor he normally would.

Stiles slumps down in his seat, tugging at the seat-belt strap across his chest until it's positioned a bit more comfortably. He presses his head against the passenger's side window, focuses on the feeling of cool glass as he watches the scenery fly by — a kind of numbness slowly spreading in his chest that trickles outwards, creeping up his neck and down his limbs.

He shivers, wrapping his arms tightly around himself and fisting his hands up in the fabric of his hoodie. It's soft, well-worn from his earlier high school years, a faded cranberry color. He picks at a loose thread sticking out of the side-seam, his fingers fumbling, as uncoordinated as ever.

He shrinks in tighter on himself and shivers again.

A click noise comes from his left, followed by the _whoosh_ of the van's heaters powering on.

Stiles blinks.

His eyes dart over to Peter, whose hand is in fact on the dashboard knob for the heater, but the man says nothing, doesn't even look Stiles' way. It's… Stiles honestly doesn't know what to make of it all, not just the heater, but everything in general that Peter's done so far that's been moderately helpful. With anyone else, Stiles would feel like he should say _thank you_ , but Peter always tends to have self-serving reasons for everything he does, and yet… somehow, this doesn't feel like that.

Stiles brow furrows, and he can't help but think that on a better day, he wouldn't have nearly as much trouble figuring out the older werewolf. He wonders if there's even anything to figure out. Maybe Peter's just… being nice. Maybe even sociopathic werewolves with a history of murder don't _always_ need a reason for being nice.

Or maybe his meds are messing with him more than he realizes.

Peter switches on the radio a moment later, filling the silence in the van with some kind of classic rock station. CCR trails out of the speakers and Stiles slumps further down in his seat, letting his gaze drift away from the werewolf sitting next to him. He's certainly not going to be figuring out any mysteries of the universe, let alone mysteries about Peter Hale, while he's feeling so out-of-sorts.

 

_Someone told me long ago There's a calm before the storm,  
I know; It's been comin' for some time._

 

Stiles absentmindedly chews on his lower lip and closes his eyes, listens to the familiar lyrics and lets the song wrap around him. His mom had loved this band. She would play their CDs and sing along to the songs whenever she was in the kitchen cooking. He remembers how the first few weeks after she'd died, his dad would sit in his cruiser out in the driveway and listen to her CDs and cry. Stiles would always pretend not to notice how red the man's eyes were whenever he came back inside the house acting like nothing was wrong.

 

_When it's over, so they say, It'll rain a sunny day,  
I know; Shinin' down like water._

 

He tunes out the world around him, breathes out and lets the music be the only thing to hold his focus so that he doesn't feel the numbness and the chills and that overall strange feeling like he's shifted seven degrees to the left of reality.

It's a three hour drive back to Beacon Hills, which means he'll have plenty of time to stress and worry about all the 'what-if's _later._ A lot of his time in therapy has been about confronting his fears and working through his panic, that avoidance isn't a healthy alternative. Sometimes though, Stiles feels like he needs to indulge in a little avoidance.

His life is by no means normal. Most people don't have to deal with monsters and the threat of death or serious injury on a regular basis. To be _on_ all the time, to be coping and confronting those fears all the time would just be impossible for him. Maybe he'd managed it at the beginning, when the whole werewolf thing had first started, but after everything that's happened… he feels too raw, stripped down…

He has three hours — three hours before he's thrust into the middle of whatever mess lies ahead and has to face Scott and his dad and _everyone else_ who will give him those concerned looks that he hates so much and start in with all the ' _You shouldn't be here for this.'_ Three hours where his mind can be free from even having to _think_ about the details of what's going on, because he can't very well do anything during the drive back, so why even _ask._

For the next three hours, Beacon Hills is Schrodinger's cat, and Stiles isn't quite ready to open the box.

 

* * *

 

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was a bit shorter, but the next one will be longer. 
> 
> I'm hoping everyone is in-character so far? I've read plenty of Teen Wolf fics, but this is my first time writing one.
> 
> In the next chapter, you'll all find out more about what's been going on, along with a bit more on Liam's origin story, which is pretty similar to what had happened in Season 4, but not exactly the same.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Stiles gets to know Liam a little bit and finally finds out what's going on back home._  
>  _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

 

* * *

 

 

**Chapter 5**

 

_Pink carnations mean 'a mother's love,' but they also mean 'gratitude' or just generally 'I'll never forget you.' Yellow tulips used to mean 'hopeless love,' but now usually mean 'cheerful thoughts' and 'happiness' and 'sunshine.'_

_When his mother died, Stiles had spent four hours reading up on the meanings of flowers —_ _**four hours** _ _because the meanings kept changing depending upon what book or website he'd looked at. He remembers being frustrated that there wasn't a singular flower chart that everyone could agree on._

_There were_ _ **some**_ _similarities between information sources, sure — like roses, many people seemed to be in agreement about the meanings behind the various rose colors — but in far too many cases, there was 'hopeless love' contrasting with 'cheerful thoughts' and after four hours, the end result had been two_ 'Meanings of Flowers' _books with all the pages torn out and folded and twisted up into a bouquet of paper flowers that he'd put on his mother's grave, and a grieving but bewildered father trying to re-negotiate Stiles' lifetime ban at the local public library._

_It had been an unpleasant experience overall — his dad had to pay for the damaged books and Stiles hadn't been allowed back to the library for a month. Stiles doesn't know why the flowers had been so important at the time. He supposes he'd been trying to communicate some deep meaningful message to his mother's memory through them. Roses, carnations, lilies and daisies — I'm sorry, I miss you, I wish you were still here — tulips, irises, and hyacinths — I love you, please, I'm sorry, please,_ come back _—_

_Eventually though, he'd reached a state of 'as long as they're pretty, then who cares?'_

_Because the language of flowers is exhausting._

_Today, he goes by favorites. His mother had loved tulips and Allison had loved daises (which he knows because of Scott), and he gets them in all different colors to brighten up what's a grey cloudy day._

_He has it down to a routine by this point. His mother's headstone is first. He'll clear away any weeds or dead leaves and lay the flowers down and stand there in silence because he feels like she probably doesn't want to hear from him now after everything that's happened._

_He always leaves her with a quiet "Love you, Mom," the one thing he can't hold back._

_Allison's grave is next. There's usually not anything to clear away for her, and more often than not, she already has flowers placed at her headstone from either Lydia or Scott or Kira._

_There are no other flowers today though, and despite his reservations about even coming here — this feeling he always has when he comes to visit her, that she might not want him here, that they'd never been the closest friends and he's about the last person that should be visiting her gravesite — Stiles finds himself sitting down on the damp grass anyway, staring at her name carved into grey polished marble._

_It's a nice headstone. He remembers not being able to breathe the first time he saw it, a cold stone slab sticking out of the ground — pretty, in a morbid way, with looping script engraved on its surface._

 

Allison Argent

Jan 31, 1994 — Nov 13, 2011

Beloved Daughter and Friend

_Nous protégeons ceux qui ne_

_peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes_

 

_There's even a little arrow symbol engraved above her name._

_Absentmindedly, Stiles scratches at his neck, digs his nails in and rakes them back and forth across his skin before he realizes what he's doing and forces himself to stop. His hand shakes just the slightest bit as he wraps his fingers back around the bouquet, squeezing at the flower stems._

_He tries to make himself say something to her, to her headstone — some kind of report of what's been going on, even just some random fact of the day, or… an apology. Always an apology._

' _Sorry I let him in. Sorry that I wasn't strong enough, that I let things go so far. Sorry that I didn't just kill myself before anyone got hurt, save everyone the trouble because I_ _ **knew**_ _you guys_ _wouldn't do it.'_

' _Sorry you had to die.'_

_The words don't come out though, and eventually, he starts pulling apart her bouquet to make daisy-chains to drape over her headstone. He feels like she would like that, even from him._

_Lately, his friends have been telling him that he should come pay her a visit, talk things out with her since he doesn't want to talk things out with anyone else. They say that it might bring him some closure, or at least just make him feel better to voice everything out-loud. They don't seem to be aware of exactly how often he visits this place — though he hasn't actually talked during any of the visits, so maybe they have a point either way._

_It's clear though that they're worried, that they're only trying to help, and he supposes that it's with good reason. He knows that he's not… doing well, for a number of different reasons, not the least of which is how fleeting sleep is for him; the nightmares have not been kind._

" _I find that constantly reflecting on one's past transgressions is not the healthiest of coping mechanisms."_

_Peter Hale steps up next to him — if there was ever a person who's even less deserving than Stiles of visiting Allison's grave, it's Peter. It feels almost disrespectful for the werewolf to even be here._

" _Go away," Stiles says dully, fingers curling tightly around one of the daisy heads, crushing petals and pollen up in his palm, before sprinkling the remains out along the grass._

" _That's hardly any way to treat someone who's just here to check up on your general well-being," the man says, slightly admonishing._

" _Don't care. Leave," Stiles says, and then no more than that._

_Peter doesn't leave though. Instead, the man sinks down to the ground next to him, seemingly as uncaring about the wet grass as Stiles is — though considering that Peter's practically bathed in the blood of his enemies, a little water is probably nothing to him. Shooting the man a quick glare, Stiles decides to ignore him and goes back to making his daisy-chains. It's his best option considering that he can't exactly_ _**make** _ _the werewolf leave._

" _There's a reason I never visit Laura's grave, you know," Peter remarks casually, as if he's giving Stiles a simple piece of advice, like, 'don't go to bed angry.'_

_Stiles presses his lips together tightly and stays silent. He could say something mean, sure, make some cruel remark about Peter being heartless, that he doesn't visit Laura's grave because he doesn't_ _**care** _ _that he killed her, but what good would that do either of them? It's not like he's in any place to judge anyway, considering all that he's done, possessed or not, and maybe somewhere deep down in that cold, dark soul of his, Peter does care that he killed his niece. Maybe the man even has the right idea about not dwelling on past mistakes. If Stiles could make himself not care, or even just make himself not think about it, he would. He can't let it go though._

_Pale yellow flower petals crumble apart in his hands. He tosses the destroyed flower head to the side and moves on to the next one. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peter pick up a few stray petals, rub them between his fingertips before letting the light breeze carry them away._

" _I could give you the same speech everyone else is giving you," Peter says, "That this isn't your fault, and so-on and so-forth, but there's not much point in wasting my breath if you're not even going to listen."_

" _And yet here you are," Stiles mutters, "sitting here and wasting your breath anyway."_

_Peter smiles, echoes, "Yes, here I am."_

_Stiles scowls, his fingers fumbling around the flowers. He can't quite get the stems to knot up right._

" _You'll figure it out eventually," Peter says, and Stiles knows he's not talking about the daisy-chain._

" _Shut up," Stiles says, growling quietly under his breath when one of the flower stems breaks. He tosses it to the side, and sets what's left of the bouquet and what he's actually managed to make of the daisy-chain down onto the grass._

_Useless. His hands are too unsteady._

_Stiles rubs at his eyes._

_Have you ever been in a state where you're so tired that you feel completely awake? Like a shot of pure energy's been injected into your veins, shuddering through your nerve-endings, and your eyes are stretched wide open like there are hooks pulling at the lids and you may never sleep again because your brain just won't_ _**stop** _ _—_

_Fuck it, man, he's there._

_Next to him, Peter makes a contemplating_ hum _noise._

_Looking over, one hand still pressed to his eye, Stiles watches as the man shifts in place and pulls a flask out from the inside of his jacket._

_Stiles stops, his hand dropping down to his side as the wolf takes a long drink from the silver container. If it were anyone else but Peter, he'd be in disbelief over the audacity of drinking at his friend's grave like this, but somehow this is just par for the course when it comes to the older werewolf._

" _Oh my god, seriously?" Stiles says, his nose scrunching up in disapproval. "You are so unbelievable."_

_It doesn't even make sense. It's not like the man can get drunk._

" _It's an old family recipe," Peter says, flashing him a sharp smile. "It's meant to be calming."_

" _Sure," Stiles says doubtfully._

_But Peter just shrugs and takes another swig of the drink. Then surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), Peter offers the flask to Stiles. For all Stiles knows though, the thing could be poisoned, or drugged. He's sure werewolf metabolism could easily burn up whatever toxin Peter might have consumed in those few quick drinks._

_What has his life become that this is even a possibility he needs to consider?_

" _If I wanted to kill you, there are much more effective ways to go about it than poison," Peter says with a roll of his eyes, apparently reading Stiles' suspicious expression perfectly and finding the whole thing exasperating._

_He waggles the flask at Stiles and after another moment of hesitation, Stiles carefully takes the container from Peter's hands. Frowning, Stiles examines the flask closely, turning it this way and that. It's got to be about the gaudiest thing he's ever seen, not that he'll tell Peter that. Considering that the drink inside is a 'family recipe,' there's a good chance the flask itself is some kind of family heirloom and the last thing he wants to do is piss Peter off._

_It really is…_ garish _though, like something he'd find at a bedazzled accessory shop marketed towards little kids who considered themselves 'fashonistas.' It's silver in color, possibly even real silver, now that he's thinking about it, and among the random designs carved into its surface are flecks of purple gemstones. The final touch is a large cloudy green quartz crystal embedded into the flask's center, like someone had stabbed it through while the silver was still hot and malleable._

_All it's missing is the triskele symbol and it'd be your typical Hale trinket._

_Stiles feels like it says something about his current state of mind that he seriously considers the possibility that this may very well be poisoned and he finds himself lifting the flask to his lips away. He decides that he'd rather not look too closely at the matter though._

_Poison isn't really Peter's style anyway, not when the man has ten perfectly efficient claws on hand, and to be honest, Stiles could really use a little bit of calming-down right now, even if it's in the form of some mysterious werewolf drink._

_So with a 'here goes nothing' kind-of-attitude, Stiles presses the flask to his mouth and tilts his head back to swallow down a gulp of whatever drink rests inside._

_And promptly chokes._

_Because despite whatever 'old family recipe' bullshit Peter had been spouting earlier (tea, Stiles had honestly been expecting tea) the drink certainly burns in his mouth like alcohol, or perhaps_ _**gasoline.** _ _And as it scorches down Stiles' throat, he coughs and gags and hunches over as the drink comes right back up his esophagus to spill out on the grass before him._

_Lovely. He's sure Allison is thrilled._

"— _the hell?" Stiles gasps, words rasping in his throat. He tongues at stinging gums. "Is that fucking_ _ **vodka?**_ _" like the worse possible vodka to ever exist though, the kind of stuff inmates mix together in their cell toilets._

" _Well, I suppose it's not for everyone," Peter says, reaching for the flask Stiles still has in an iron grip, but Stiles upturns the flask before the man can grab it, pouring the liquid out onto the grass—clear liquid, it really is bad vodka, or maybe some terrible werewolf variation of vodka._

' _Calming' he'd said — what a load of crap._

" _You're such an asshole," Stiles says, spitting on the ground, trying to clear away the taste._

_He feels inexplicably angry, like he wants to chuck the flask at Peter's head, but in the end settles for just shoving the thing forcefully at Peter's chest. If Peter honestly thought that'd be helping, giving an overly stressed-out and who-knows-what-else teenager alcohol to drown in, then he's not the kind of person Stiles wants to be around right now. He already thinks about it enough at home, the knowledge of exactly where his dad keeps all the liquor tucked away, how easy it would be to sneak a few bottles past his dad and just make himself_ _**stop thinking.** _ _He doesn't need that shit running through his head out here too._

_Reaching for the daisy-chain he'd made, and the remaining daisies left over from the bouquet, Stiles arranges them over and around Allison's headstone before standing to leave. He ignores the man's eyes on his back as he storms away, not even caring that he's making a spectacle of himself — Peter can go fuck off._

_Stiles sits in his jeep in the cemetery parking lot, his head pressed to the steering wheel with his eyes shut tight and his fingers digging into the driver's seat so that he won't scratch at his arms like he keeps finding himself doing. He focuses on his breathing, keeping it slow and steady, because he feels rattled and the very last thing he needs is a panic attack on top of everything else._

_It's starting to get late, and he wants to go home, but he knows he needs to calm himself down a bit before he should even attempt driving._

_There's a knock on the driver's side window._

" _Fuck," he doesn't look up, he already knows who it is, "Go away!"_

" _Let me drive you home," Peter says through the car window. "It's the least I can do considering that this is my fault."_

" _That's never mattered to you before," Stiles mutters, still not moving from his hunched over position._

_Peter sighs._

" _Stiles…"_

_After a beat of silence, Stiles grumbles under his breath and unlocks the driver's side door before sliding over into the passenger's seat. He does up his seat belt as Peter climbs in next to him and starts up the car. The ride back to his house is done in silence, with Stiles more or less ignoring the werewolf behind the wheel. It's only as they're pulling into the driveway, right up next to his dad's cruiser, and Peter's turning off the jeep, when Stiles finally spares the man a glance._

_Peter's lips are pressed tightly together, his mouth turned down into a frown, but only for a brief moment before he notices Stiles looking and plasters an easy-going smile on his face._

_Holding out the jeep's keys for Stiles to take, Peter says, "Feel better soon, Stiles."_

_And then he leaves, as simple as that._

_When Stiles meets his dad at the front door, he has no explanation to offer._

* * *

Awareness comes in bits and pieces in between the greatest hits of the classic rock genre — with _Queen_ melding into _Aerosmith_ , and _ZZ Top_ fading out to _Styx_ — but Stiles doesn't fully come back to himself until they reach their first gas stop.

"Red Bull," Stiles mumbles at the sound of Peter exiting the car. "Gimme one…"

Peter huffs out a laugh, says, "Not a chance." and closes the driver's door behind him, effectively cutting off any kind of protest Stile may have given.

Stiles groans to himself about a lack of caffeine, but he peels his eyes open anyway and shuffles himself into a more upright position. Liam's already climbing out of the van and slamming the door behind him before Stiles feels even halfway alert. A quick look around tells him that they're out in the middle of nowhere — just trees, the road, and the gas station — and the clock on the dash reads _7:12PM,_ so they've been on the road for about an hour now.

' _Two more hours to go then…'_

He looks over his shoulder at Liam. The kid's leaning against the side of the van now, looking like the very definition of 'petulant teenager,' with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes on the setting sun. The closed-off glare on his face could very easily rival Derek's in terms of broodiness. And it's just… _weird_ to Stiles that Scott actually bit someone and made a beta, and that this kid is it — like in the three months that Stiles has been gone, Scott's gone out and had an illegitimate child or something.

Stiles tugs at the drawstrings of his hoodie, twisting them into knots around his fingers as he watches the kid. To be honest, he's a little curious about Liam, and he's half-tempted to get out of the car and join him, maybe strike up a conversation — because any technical kid of Scott's is one he should know, right? And Stiles doesn't know very much about the younger beta wolf at all. It'd never been the primary topic of conversation when his friends had visited, and at the time he'd been too swept up in his own issues to really bother asking.

The only thing he can even distinctly recall about Liam is what Scott had told him about how the bite ended up happening to begin with — that a rogue hunter had forced a family of wendigos to change their hunting grounds from just the recently deceased to something more _alive._ Scott hadn't gone into too much detail — just that Liam had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that an extensive amount of… _mauling_ had been involved.

The bite had been Liam's only chance at survival.

Scott's words echo in his head even now, the quietly spoken, " _I had to, man."_ It'd been said in a way where it sounded like his best friend was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince Stiles, " _I just_ — _it seemed like the right thing to do._ "

Not for the first time, Stiles wishes he could have been there to help his friend, but as Scott had told him multiple times, _"No, Stiles, you just take care of yourself, okay?"_

He doesn't know what's more infuriating, not being able to help, or constantly being told to not even worry about helping.

Stiles fumbles with the buckle of his seat belt to get out of the car. He's got the door open and one foot out on the gravel when Peter's suddenly there, an eyebrow quirked up in question with one hand grasping at Stiles' upper arm. The man's not wearing orderly scrubs anymore, and Stiles wonders at what point he'd changed out of them. 

"Bathroom break?" Peter asks.

"No, I, uh—" he glances over his shoulder at Liam, but the younger wolf's already climbing back into the car. Stiles' shoulders sag just the slightest bit. "Never mind."

He's sure Peter sees right through him. The werewolf has an annoying knack for picking up on all the subtle details in most situations. Peter doesn't say anything about it though, just kind of hums and passes Stiles a plastic bag filled with snack foods from the gas station.

They're on the road again soon after and Stiles is half-heartedly pawing through the bag of snacks. He wouldn't exactly say he's _pouting_ over the fact that Peter got him a ginger ale instead of something that's actually caffeinated — but yeah, he's totally pouting.

"Caffeine is the last thing you need right now," Peter tells him for the second time in the past ten minutes.

"What do you know? You're not my doctor," Stiles snipes back.

"No, but I've read your file."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Stiles mutters sarcastically, closely examining a bag of chips before shoving it back in among the other snacks. He's honestly not all that hungry despite it being dinner time, and he supposes, if anything, the ginger ale will soothe the lingering nausea he's feeling — not that he wants Peter to know that.

Stiles sighs and pulls out a travel-sized box of saltines, deciding to ignore the smug look that crosses Peter's face.

Damn meddling werewolves.

Stuffing a cracker into his mouth, Stiles twists around in his seat and holds out the bag of snacks to Liam. He does it without really thinking, an automatic response after so many junk food runs to the grocery store with Scott, and he only starts second-guessing himself when Liam gives him this deer-in-headlights look, as if he's holding out a knife instead of a bag filled with carbs and saturated fats.

Stiles falters under the weight of it. He's reminded again of the potential for rumors back home. None of his friends had mentioned any such thing when they'd come to visit, but Stiles knows how small towns like Beacon Hills work. It's not like he'd been exactly subtle in his departure. A lot of it had happened behind closed doors, sure, but people only needed a glimpse of the truth to blow it wildly out of proportion, and there'd been plenty of glimpses throughout his breakdown. Especially at the end there…

Stiles is almost ready to just drop the bag and shrink back into his own space in the front seat, tell himself that it's not worth the trouble and that Scott can just have his beta back once they reach Beacon Hills — when Liam finally reaches out.

It'd almost be funny how cautious the kid seems when he takes the proffered snack bag if it wasn't so strange. Liam murmurs a quick " _Thanks_ ," pulling out a bag of Cheetos and setting the rest of the snacks down on the seat next to him — so very tentative, like a puppy making its first trip down a flight of stairs. It's kind of baffling, really, and even a little off-putting. Stiles isn't exactly a picture of intimidation right now, yet Liam's demeanor seems to speak otherwise. He almost asks what the problem is, because clearly there's _something,_ but he's not quite sure he actually wants to know. Chances are that the answer is nothing that he would like.

Instead, when he opens his mouth to speak, what comes out is an awkward, fumbling, "So, Liam, uh… tell me about yourself."

Ugh, _terrible_ opener, just— he's usually so much better than that. He isn't exactly at the top of his game right now though, and despite that feeble start, he finds that once the words are out there, he doesn't want to stop. They've got about two more hours to go before they reach home, and they're stuck in a car with not much else to do. Now is as good a time as any to get to know the younger beta wolf, right? Test out the waters, so-to-speak. Exchange some stories maybe.

At the very least, Stiles can see how Liam's dealing with the whole supernatural thing. A violent introduction into a brand new way of life couldn't have been easy for the kid, and while Stiles has personally seen how Scott's handled the leadership role, Stiles does have to wonder how his best friend is doing at the whole mentor thing.

So… talking. Stiles can do talking.

Liam doesn't seem to be in agreement of this course of action though, because the kid's brows furrow and when his eyes snap up to Stiles, one hand still buried in the bag of Cheetos, his posture is nothing but tense when he asks, "What? Why?"

Holding back his frown, Stiles adopts a loose-limbed, relaxed slouch, non-threatening, as he shrugs and says, "No real reason. Just call me curious."

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles sees Peter smirking at him, but he ignores the man in favor of watching Liam.

"Not much to say," Liam says, evasive in that teenage way that Stiles is all too familiar with, "I'm a freshman in high school. Dad's a doctor. Mom's an accountant. No siblings." His shoulders hunch up, "End of story."

Liam stuffs a couple of Cheetos into his mouth, and averts his eyes to the car window next to him, dismissive.

Stiles blinks, his eyebrows raised.

Brisk and to-the-point, kind of snappy. There's a part of Stiles that thinks with humorous exasperation, ' _Youths.'_

Stiles runs a hand through his hair and tries again.

"Okay… uh, how old are you?" he asks.

"Fourteen," Liam says tersely, and Stiles blinks in surprise, purses his lips, because _shit —_ fourteen, really? He knows that sixteen isn't that much older to be thrust into a dangerous, supernaturally-influenced life (Thank you, _Peter_ ), but still, fourteen. That's young.

And at the same time, for someone who's fourteen, Liam seems pretty on edge, volatile. Stiles wonders if it's just the new werewolf thing. He doesn't remember Scott being like this in the beginning. Then again, Erica and Isaac had been pretty far up there in terms of wolfy aggression when they'd first been turned.

Or maybe it's just an 'issue with Stiles' thing…

Stiles sighs.

"Look, I get it," Stiles says, catching Liam's eyes, "We don't really know each other, right? I'm pretty much a stranger to you—"

"You're not," Liam quickly interrupts, but then hesitates, seemingly searching for the right words. He crinkles the bag of Cheetos in his hands, falteringly says, "I mean— your friends have told me a lot about you, so I… kind of feel like I know you, at least a little."

It's said so earnestly that Stiles finds himself believing the words, even if it doesn't quite explain the younger wolf's general demeanor.

"Though I got to say," Liam adds with a wry look on his face, "it's weird that you don't seem all that bothered by Peter, given what I've heard of the past."

"Peter bothers me plenty," Stiles says, "And I bother Peter. It's a mutual bothering."

Which is true _,_ but in a completely hard to explain way that Stiles doesn't quite understand himself.

"The medication helps too," Stiles says half-heartedly and for the sake of humor, though somehow it falls flat. Liam certainly doesn't look amused. Going for honesty, Stiles admits, "Let's just say you get used to him after a while."

"You say such sweet things to me, Stiles," Peter says, all sass and pleasant tones.

"Right back at you, Creeperwolf," Stiles says, tossing the man a wide, exaggerated smile.

Liam eyes them both with a pinched expression, and though Stiles can't be completely sure, he thinks he hears the younger boy mutter the word _'weird'_ to himself as he closes up his bag of Cheetos and stuffs it back in among the rest of the snacks. Even after their (admittedly stilted) conversation though, Liam still looks tense and on edge sitting in the backseat, and Stiles wonders if forcing a conversation as he's been doing is the wrong way to really go about this. Maybe it'd be best to wait until they're back in Beacon Hills where he'll have Scott as a buffer, someone who Liam actually knows through more than just stories.

Sighing, Stiles slouches sideways in his seat, and he's very tentative when he next asks, "So how's… how's Scott doing as an alpha?" He even jokingly adds, "I'm sure I could get you into protective custody if he'd doing a poor job, like, forgetting to water you or whatever."

And surprisingly, Liam relaxes. Stiles can practically see the tension ooze right out of him — but then, Scott does tend to have that effect on a lot of people.

"No, Scott's been fine," Liam says, "Pretty great actually."

Okay, common ground, and it's about Scott. Stiles can definitely work with that — and he's quick to jab an elbow into Peter's side because _"Peter, you can stop rolling your eyes."_

"So he's been doing well at acclimating you to all this supernatural bullshit then?" Stiles asks, making a random flailing gesture at the 'supernatural bullshit' part.

Liam opens his mouth to answer, but whatever it is he'd been about to say is cut off by Peter's sudden burst of laughter — which, wow, has Stiles _ever_ heard Peter laugh like that before? — and curiously enough, Liam turns a sharp glare on the older wolf, even going as far as kicking the back of Peter's seat.

"Shut up," Liam says, heated, "There's no way you could even know about that. You weren't there, and I know no one talks to you."

Which just _completely_ flies right over Stiles' head, especially when Peter smirks back at the boy through the rear-view mirror and says, " _Child, please,_ I know everything that goes on in that town, including all the _little mishaps_ that go on in your pack."

"Thank you, Peter, that was suitably creepy," Stiles says, exasperated, "Anyone want to fill me in on what you're both talking about?"

Liam and Peter seem to have some kind of stare-down through the mirror over… _whatever it is,_ before Liam apparently caves and says, rather reluctantly, "Okay, so… Scott wasn't so great at the very beginning."

Peter looks practically overjoyed by this fact, and, it seems, by whatever it is that Liam's about to say, which never bodes well for anyone involved, especially considering the subject matter—

Liam sighs, "When the bite took and I… healed, I guess Scott kind of… _panicked_ — at least that's what Kira and Lydia told me later on — and he kinda, sorta ended up… _kidnapping_ me and locking me up in his bathroom."

Stiles' eyebrows shoot up, because _what?_

"What?"

_Surely_ he must have heard that wrong.

But apparently not, because Liam just nods his head and says, "Yeah, like with duct tape and everything."

Stiles had _totally_ been kidding about the whole protective custody thing — what the fuck, Scott? That was like ten times worse than anything Derek had done back when he'd been alpha. Duct tape, _really?_

"Oh my god," Stiles breathes out.

"For the record, he'd said that things probably would have gone better if you had been there," Liam offers.

"Yeeaaah…" Stiles drags out, "I'm pretty positive I would have just made things worse somehow." He does have a history of escalating thing in a bad way when it comes to hijinks with Scott. "I appreciate the gesture though."

Liam gets this far-away look on his face, like he's imagining the possibilities and that it doesn't look pretty, "I guess I'm just lucky that Lydia showed up then."

Lydia _is_ frequently a godsend, so her involvement doesn't surprise Stiles at all — though he does kind of wish he had been there to at least see the look on her face when she saw what Scott had done.

"Anyway, the next day at school, Scott was being pretty weird then too," Liam continues, "Being all creepy like, _'the bite is a gift'_ and ' _we're brothers now.'_ "

Holy crap, he didn't.

"Oh. My. _God."_

Stiles… can _never_ let Scott live this down.

There's a beat of silence as Stiles readjusts his world-view on his best friend, and then Peter chuckles quietly, likely due to whatever face Stiles must be making, and Stiles just fucking _loses_ it and needs to put his head down against his knees because he's laughing so hard he can't _breathe._ Liam gives an irritated huff from the backseat, but Stiles doesn't hold it against him because there's no way the kid could _know._

' _The bite is a gift,'_ and Scott probably did it with this brooding look on his face and likely _zero_ explanation beforehand on what those words even _mean_ when you're actually trying to be serious about the subject of werewolves and turning — oh Scott…

Stiles sighs. He'd never actually realized until now how much he misses his best friend, all of his friends, really.

"He came through in the end though, during my first full moon," Liam says, sounding defensive.

Defensive over his _alpha_ , and that makes Stiles smile.

"Yeah," Stiles says, sitting back up in his seat, "I'm sure he did. Scott comes through in the end when it really matters."

Maybe not every single time when they'd first started out on this wild ride, but they'd _all_ been stumbling around back then, making stupid mistakes.

Leaning back in his seat, looking over his shoulder at Liam, he says, "So, Scotty's your subject of choice then?"

Liam shrugs noncommittally and looks away. He doesn't actually deny it though, about Scott, so Stiles continues on.

"Well, then," Stiles claps his hands together, and he can't help the smile spreading across his face, "Do _I_ have some stories to share with _you!"_ Practically a whole life-time's worth. _"_ And you can stop with the face, Peter, because this is the Scott McCall story hour and you'll just have to deal."

"I could kick you both out of this car right now," Peter says.

"You didn't go through all the trouble of coming to get me just to leave me on the side of the road," Stiles points out, and when Peter makes no further protests, aside from a frustrated grunt, Stiles considers that agreement-enough.

"The year," he begins dramatically, "Is 2002—"

 

* * *

Stiles blinks awake slowly. It's dark out now. Nothing's visible beyond the van's headlights, and when he squints at the small clock on the dashboard, he can just barely make out the glowing numbers reading _9:25PM._

He feels like… they should be home by now… or at least almost home.

Maybe Peter ran into traffic…

"I fell asleep again," he mumbles groggily. "I don't remember falling asleep…"

"Probably because you practically conked out mid-sentence," Liam says from somewhere in the dark behind him, "It was actually pretty impressive."

"My meds make me sleepy," Stiles says in his defense, ruffling a lethargic hand through his hair. "'s a side-effect."

He guesses he'd been more tired than he realized. To be fair though, this 'save the town' shit _has_ thrown him off his schedule.

Speaking of which, he should probably take his night-time dose, though he'd really rather wait until they're back home and he can go to sleep in his actual bed.

Except — his pillow, he'd left his pillow back at Rosenbrook. Damn. Maybe it wouldn't matter too much though between all his medications. He'd never really had the opportunity to check so far.

Stiles shifts up from where he'd been slumped down in his seat. Wiping the drool from his face, he asks around a wide yawn, "How much longer 'till we're back? We almost home yet?"

There's a beat of silence, before he hears Liam shift behind him and say, "What?"

And Stiles pauses, because that definitely isn't an 'I didn't hear what you just said'- _what_. No, that's a confused 'what in the world are you _talking_ about' _-what._

All of which are clear signs of being yet another _Peter Hale Scheme,_ and Stiles' gaze snaps over to the older werewolf next to him as he starts to say, " _Peter—"_

But before he can get out much more protest than that, he's cut off when the Queen song that had been playing on the radio is interrupted by some kind of special news alert.

" _Once again, please be on the lookout for a silver 2008 Honda Odyssey minivan that's wanted in connection to the abduction of seventeen-year-old Przemysław Stilinski, who was last seen at 6:15PM today—"_

Stiles groans even as the radio announcer rambles on, because _god,_ they used his real first name (and butchered it _horribly,_ by the way). He'd gone to great lengths in his lifetime to keep that incomprehensible first name of his a secret and now it's being broadcast all over the radio for _everyone_ to hear.

The announcer goes on to list off more information about his disappearance, thankfully only giving the general location that he'd gone missing from and not actually mentioning the hospital specifically, as well as giving a brief description of himself — the clothes he's wearing, hair color, eye color, things like that — before moving on to give a rather vague description of Peter, who is dubbed the 'alleged abductor.'

Apparently they had gotten more on camera than Stiles thought they would, including what must be a pretty good shot of the van leaving the facility at the same time that he'd gone missing.

"You're a regular celebrity now," Peter says, sounding amused and not at all bothered about being marked as a kidnapper. He turns the volume on the radio down just as the announcer is saying what number people can call if they have any information for police. "That announcement's been playing for the past twenty minutes. You know, the first twenty-four hours are the most crucial."

Stiles shoots a glare over at the man, not that Peter seems at all fazed. No, he just keeps driving along at a normal speed, slowing only to turn off onto some side-road — a side-road that Stiles doesn't recognize, and now that he's actually taking the time to look around and squint through the darkness to see, Stiles realizes that _none_ of their surroundings even look slightly familiar. Which, by this point, they should, shouldn't they? Because Beacon Hills is a three hour drive away from Rosenbrook, and according to the radio, it's been almost three hours exactly since they left.

_What_ , Liam had said. When Stiles had asked if they were almost home, Liam had said ' _what?'_

"Lucky for us," Peter continues, nonchalant, "We'll be switching cars soon, so their little announcement won't really matter anyway."

"And _why_ —" Stiles says slowly, carefully, so very _deadly serious_ , "—would we be switching cars when we should be getting back to Beacon Hills at any moment now, _Peter?_ "

Silence falls over the van once more at his tensely spoken question, but only for a second before Liam practically explodes into activity behind them.

" _You didn't tell him?_ " Liam practically shrieks, his voice pitched high in the same way it had been when he'd said _'You broke him out of the hospital?'_ The boy's eyes flare gold as he leans forward in his seat and snarls, "Did you even tell him _anything at all?_ "

"It's not like I've exactly had the time to explain things before we broke out," Peter says, clearly annoyed with being reprimanded by a fourteen-year-old.

"You've had time!" Liam snaps. "You've had plenty of time! We've been in this van for three hours! The only reason I didn't say anything is because I thought you'd already told him!"

Stiles hadn't asked either, to be completely fair. He could have asked a while back, but he didn't. He'd thought that he could just wait until they got back to Beacon Hills and find out all about it then, but from the sounds of it, that isn't in the cards, and Stiles just — he can't hold off on hearing about what's going on back home any longer. He needs to know. He needs to know what dangers lie ahead, he needs to know if anyone's been hurt or killed. And, god, what if someone's been dead this whole time and he'd just been settling for ignorance?

"My dad's okay, right?" he asks quietly. It will always be his first question, no matter the circumstances.

"You father is fine, Stiles," Peter says, so very sincerely that Stiles actually believes him.

Stiles swallows thickly, nods to himself. Good— that's good.

"Tell me," he says, and has to pause to clear his throat to force the words out, "Tell me _exactly_ what's going on _right now._ "

Both wolves exchange a quick look in the dark, neither one of them speaking, and Stiles has to tell himself that no matter what, it can't possibly be worse than the nogitsune was.

Peter sighs, pulls the van over to the side of the road and puts it into park. The radio gets muted completely, and Stiles digs his fingertips into his legs to keep from fidgeting too much. Peter shifts sideways in his seat, one hand still resting on the steering wheel, and even through the dark, Stiles can feel the man's calculating look.

"I'd say it started about a month ago," Peter finally says. He speaks easily, like what he's about to say is more interesting than it is terrifying, and if it were anyone but Peter Hale speaking, Stiles might take some comfort in that, like maybe things aren't as bad off as he'd originally thought, but you can never be sure with Peter.

"This feeling of… _dread_ swept through the whole town. Even I felt it," Peter says. "It lasted a few days, and of course it put everyone on edge. Some people panicked, crime went up for a little while there, all because of this _feeling._ Honestly, none of us really knew what to expect." Peter drums his fingertips against the steering wheel, shrugs and says, "Then it all stopped."

Stiles blinks, uncomprehending, "What, just like that? No big calamity involved?"

"Not quite a calamity, no," Peter says. "Something did happen though, but it was so gradual at first that we didn't even notice it."

"Geez, _what?_ Would you just _tell me,_ you over-dramatic fuzz-ball?"

Peter smirks at him, the glow of the dashboard illuminating his face, and Stiles is reminded of when the man told him the story of Derek's first love — he did always seem to have a thing for putting on a good show.

"People started getting… _happy,_ " Peter says.

"Like a _creepy_ amount of happy though," Liam blurts out, his eyes wide and glowing at Stiles from the backseat. "Not like a normal happy."

People were… happy…?

' _ **Happy** Jim.'_

Stiles' eyes narrow. He _knew_ something wasn't right about that guy.

"Yes, it's all been rather infuriating," Peter mutters with a casual wave of his hand, "Do you realize how irritating it is not being able to leave your house without _someone_ always coming up to tell you how _wonderful_ everything is? I could probably run my claws through their stomach and they'd _still_ be smiling as they bleed out. And _believe me,_ the temptation was there."

"He, uh, he didn't though," Liam haltingly assures him. "Kill anyone, I mean."

Rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes, Stiles admits, "I can hardly talk, one of them showed up at the hospital and I threw a chair at him."

The look Peter gives him can only be approving.

All things considered, it doesn't sound that bad. Annoying, sure, but compared to everything else they've ever had to deal with, this is probably about the least-threatening problem Beacon Hills has ever faced.

And yet…

Stiles frowns.

"But, wait, why did you guys come get me then?" he asks, because the more he thinks about it, the more things don't add up. "It's just a bunch of happy people, right? Yeah, it's weird, but it's not dangerous, and I know even less about this than you do, so it's not like I'll be much help."

Liam and Peter stare at him, not saying anything.

"Surely… you can all handle a bunch of happy people," Stiles says, slower, less confident, as he looks between the two wolves. "…What?"

"Well, Stiles," Peter says after a beat of silence, "your dreams have oddly coincided with this unusual situation. I don't know yet how they can help, but it's best to have you close just in case. That's the first reason for coming to get you."

'The _first_ reason,' which of course implies—

"And the second reason?" Stiles asks.

Holding up his hands — as if to say ' _Ta-da!'_ — Peter says, "You are currently looking at the last two people of Beacon Hills who haven't been affected yet by this… happiness curse, or whatever it is — three people if we count yourself, and we'll need all the help we can get in this case."

" _What?_ " Stiles' mind stumbles to a halt, struggling to comprehend Peter's words. Suddenly his seat belt feels entirely too tight, and his hands fumble for the buckle, "My dad? Scott too, the pack?"

Peter nods, "Every single one of them has fallen under this thrall of happiness. People were being affected faster than we could figure out how to reverse it, let alone what's even causing it."

"…It got Lydia too?"

Lydia is immune to everything. That's just her thing when it comes to shit like this. How in the hell could it get her as well?

"Lydia… didn't get happy like all the rest," Liam says quietly, and it's his tone of voice that sends a flash of fear straight through Stiles.

The seat belt comes undone, but he hardly notices it.

"Is she okay?" Stiles asks, sucking in a quiet breath to hold.

"She has regretfully fallen into a coma after whatever it is got to her," Peter tells him. "She's currently at the hospital, being well taken care of. People might be overly happy, but they're still doing their jobs."

Stiles exhales. He turns away from the two wolves to slump down in his seat. A coma. That… well it isn't death, so at least there's that, and if they reverse whatever's going on, then she'll probably wake up—

_Will,_ she _**will**_ wake up.

"So how did you two get away intact?" Stiles asks dully, absentmindedly picking at the loose thread on his hoodie again.

"I'm not sure about myself," Peter admits, "Just that, for whatever reason, I haven't been affected."

Peter's always been kind of outside the realm of _normal_ when it comes to werewolves, so him not being affected isn't too surprising. It's suspicious as hell, sure, but there will always be a level of suspicion surrounding most of the man's actions, and it's not like there's _no_ possible explanation as to why Peter escaped unscathed. Maybe whatever it is just doesn't like narcissistic, undead creeperwolfs.

As for Liam…

The younger boy admits, quite hesitantly, "I was there at the very beginning, but then I had plans to go visit my grandmother out of state and Scott said it was alright that I go, that they had everything under control. By the time I got back, it was just me and Peter."

There's a Little Red Riding Hood joke in there somewhere, but for the life of him, Stiles can't muster up the energy or the enthusiasm to make one.

He tries to picture Beacon Hills as this cheerful town with everyone walking around smiling and happy and… he just can't visualize it without all the killing and the violence and the blood, it just seems too strange, too impossible, and isn't is sad that such things have become so commonplace in his life that he can't imagine a _normal_ reality without it? No wonder he's so fucked up.

It occurs to him though that this perfect, creepily happy townspeople image seems familiar for some reason. Frowning, his brow furrows as he tries to think of _why,_ and—

"Wait," Stiles says slowly, " _Brave New World,_ a society controlled by their happiness," he immediately whirls on the older man next to him, "That is such cryptic bullshit, Peter, you are such a dick! You could have just _told_ me."

The grin on Peter's face can only be described as _wolfish_ , "When have you ever known me to just _give_ people the answers to all their questions?"

"You're not _clever,_ you know," Stiles snaps.

"Really?" Peter says loftily, "I certainly think I am."

Stiles kind of wishes he still had that book so that he could smack Peter in his dumb smug face with it. As it is, he settles for just hitting Peter in the arm; not that that actually does anything. In fact, Peter looks infuriatingly amused by the whole thing.

Grumbling to himself, not caring that both werewolves in the car can clearly hear everything he's saying, Stiles buckles himself back in, his movements on the violent and jerky side, and as soon as the buckle clicks, he crosses his arms and draws his knees up tightly against his chest. He doesn't care how childish it all makes him look.

Peter must take that as a cue to get moving, because the man shifts the car into drive and pulls back out onto the road. Stiles leans against the door and casts his gaze out the window at — _wherever_ the hell they are, certainly not anywhere near Beacon Hills, from what he can see.

His shoulders slump. It's late now, almost ten at night, and he's tired and still a little nauseous and he knows he needs to take his nighttime dose soon…

"So what the hell's our game plan even?" Stiles asks passively after a few minutes spent driving in silence. He glances over his shoulder at Peter, "You _do_ have a plan, don't you?"

Peter's not usually one to fly by the seat of his pants, Stiles knows. Secret elaborate plans that only Peter knows all the details of tend to be the werewolf's usual forte.

"We're certainly not going back to Beacon Hills," Peter says, taking another turn-off down some other random street. "Not without any idea of what we're dealing with. No, first we'll be switching cars, _then_ we'll be taking a trip down to LA for a little information gathering."

Leaning forward from the backseat, Liam quickly adds, "Deaton found someone who's heard of something like this before. They say they have some stuff left over from the last time around, but they won't say exactly what."

Oh, great, some _stuff,_ that sounds very helpful.

"They're not about to give it up either without a sizable cash exchange," Peter says. "Luckily, I happen to have the funds on hand."

Or ten sharp claws if they won't cooperate. Stiles isn't stupid, he knows how Peter works. And he can't believe he's going along with this. Leaving the hospital is one thing, but a drive all the way down to _Los Angeles_ to pick up some kind of mysterious item, really?

"LA is an _eight hour_ _drive_ from here," he says, half-incredulous, half-complaining.

"Nine hours from our present location," Peter says with a smug _'yes, your point?'_ kind of tone.

Stiles practically flails in his seat when he asks, "You couldn't have just picked me up on your way _back?_ "

Does he really need to be there for the _magical item quest_ part of this little journey, honestly?

But Peter just smiles, like ' _Oh, Stiles, don't be ridiculous,_ ' and his eyes flash blue in the darkness of the car as he looks Stiles' way — his gaze one of amusement, but also piercing in that way that only Peter Hale can manage.

"Now where would the fun in that be?"

 

* * *

 

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear that there's a method to my madness and that I'm not just throwing random shit together. That said, I'm sorry to everyone who was looking forward to Stiles getting back to Beacon Hills right off. They will get there; they just need to make a pit-stop first.
> 
> I hope everyone's still enjoying the story.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated. :)


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles eyes his reflection doubtfully. 
> 
> "I look like a hipster."
> 
> Liam snaps a picture with his cellphone.  
> _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys **so** much for all your wonderful comments (they do a writer's heart good)! I'm glad everyone's enjoying things so far and I hope you all enjoy this chapter too. :)

* * *

 

 

**Chapter 6**

 

_That first night after Stiles pitches a fit at the cemetery and Peter drives him home, Stiles takes too much NyQuil and wakes up after a four hour death-sleep puking green and shaking all over the place._

_He goes to school because his dad's on shift and not there to keep him home, and he drifts and shivers between classes, smiling at his friends when they're looking and staring into the middle-distance when they're not. He drives home thinking about how sanity is just the ability to ignore that intrusive thought about how easy it would be to simply turn the steering wheel and drive into oncoming traffic._

_Dinner that night is whole-grain pasta and a turkey-substitute meatball recipe that Stiles only vaguely remembers making. His dad grimaces around the first bite before schooling his features and asking Stiles how his day went, and Stiles is sure that he answers, but he can't for the life of him remember what he'd said._

_He does his homework mechanically and mindlessly and figures that as long as there are answers written down, the details don't really matter, and he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and doesn't think of the remaining bottle of NyQuil he has tucked away in his dresser drawer. He watches the shift of natural light across his walls as the moon travels the sky and the sun comes up, and he thinks about flower petals and daisy chains and '_ this isn't your fault, and so-on and so-forth' _and '_ you'll figure it out eventually _.'_

_He doesn't sleep_

_But he goes to school as if he did, and smiles at his friends_ — _or at least he thinks he smiles, but maybe he doesn't. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, and neither does the homework he passes in that may very well have nonsense written down for answers, and the same goes for the tests he takes and fills out at random._

_He doesn't go to lacrosse — isn't even sure he's on the team anymore — just drives back home, hands on the wheel, ten-and-two, ten-and-two—_

_Sanity is knowing that sometimes your thoughts are destructive and you just have to ignore them, not let them take over — and dinner is leftover pasta, a hearty side-salad, and his dad's disappointed frown._

_Stiles lies in bed and decides that he doesn't care if he did his homework or not, and he stares up at the ceiling with eyes so wide they could just roll right out of their sockets. He presses his fingertips to his chest and he wonders about the difference between the feeling that you're forgetting something and the feeling that something's wrong and exactly which one of those feelings has settled beneath his breastbone and deep inside his heart and lungs. He watches his room go from dark to light and thinks about Peter Hale knocking on his jeep window and '_ you'll figure it out eventually.'

_And he doesn't sleep._

__—_ Go to school, pleasantries, smiles, blank stares when teachers ask for his homework and instructions to 'see me after class' that he ignores_ _— ten-and-two, ten-and-two, maintain sanity and normalcy, do_ _ **not**_ _turn that wheel_ _—_

_Dinner is two greasy bags of fast food because his dad's frown is not nutritionally satisfying, and Stiles doesn't understand what the problem is, but his dad looks at the bags of heart-stopping burgers and curly fries and calls into the station to tell them that he won't be making it in for his shift that night._

" _Everything's fine," Stiles says when his dad asks, but the man stays home anyway, and they eat their burgers and fries and his dad watches him as discretely as he can the whole time._

_At his dad's prompting, they sit down in the living room to watch a movie together, but Stiles is only half-paying attention to it and his dad seems more interested in watching Stiles out of the corner of his eye_ _than focusing on the TV screen in front of them_. _It makes_ _Stiles fidget and shift uncomfortably, not liking the extra scrutiny because he's alright and everything's fine, and he stares blankly ahead at the TV screen and thinks about '_ this isn't your fault' _and '_ waste my breath' _and '_ you'll figure it out eventually.'

_Stiles excuses himself to the bathroom — retreats to the one upstairs because it's further away, and shuts himself up inside the small space. He runs his hands under cold water for the sake of feeling the cold, focuses on it no matter how distantly it may seem, and he tucks one hand up under his shirt to flatten his chilled palm up against his chest._

_For a moment, he focuses on his breathing_ — _ten-and-two, hands on the wheel_ — _and he stands there and absentmindedly notices how if he focuses enough, he can almost feel his heartbeat changing its rhythm—_

_And he turns and looks up into the mirror._

_Ten-and-two._

_And his eyes lock onto his reflection_ — _**focuses**_ _._

_Stiles turns the wheel._

_And he thinks he finally figures something out._

 

* * *

 

Stiles wakes up laying horizontal, his lips pulling down into a frown, and he reluctantly peels his eyes open to the sight of pink light stretching across the ceiling of the car; their new getaway car. He doesn't know the make or model, just black with four doors, pre-owned, easily forgettable in a crowd among every other standard-sized car.

He blinks sleepily, peering out the window from where he's stretched out in his seat. The wide-open sky is the only thing he can make out, golds and shades of orange blending into purples and pinks, a swath of clouds soaking up all the colors; the sun's coming up and the car's parked somewhere where he can just faintly make out the rushing sound of waves.

The ocean, which — given the hour and the amount of time that's clearly passed — means that they've reached their destination, or at the very least, they're close. Rolling his head to the side, Stiles first glances into the backseat, takes in the sight of Liam curled up into a protective ball and out like a light, the kid's features pinched even in sleep.

It's honestly a little disconcerting. Fourteen-year-olds should not have stress-lines that pronounced, and Stiles is half-tempted to reach out and smooth the kid's forehead over with his thumb, which is even _more_ disconcerting, because Stiles tends to err on the side of 'asshole' more than he does anything that could be considered even remotely 'paternal.'

It's the baby-face that's throwing him, he knows. Seriously, it's no wonder Scott let the kid go off to see his grandmother right when shit started going down.

With a mental head-shake, Stiles looks over at Peter next, but unlike Liam, the man's wide awake. Blue eyes staring straight ahead, one hand resting lax on the steering wheel while the other clutches a Styrofoam cup of what smells like coffee; it doesn't look like Peter's slept at all. Of course, given their present circumstances, at least one of them needs to stay vigilant, and he doubts that Peter would trust anyone but himself to keep an eye out.

Peter's gaze drifts down to catch Stiles' eyes, likely having heard the up-tick of a waking heartbeat, and a vague memory flits through Stiles' mind from the night before — of their car slowing to a stop along the side of the road, of Peter leaning over him in the dark as sleep and medication dragged Stiles under—

Yet all the man did was recline Stiles' seat back, stared down at him with sharp blue eyes and quietly said, _"Go to sleep, Stiles."_

And throughout that entire odd encounter, perhaps the most shocking thing of all was that Stiles' heart rate had remained steady and sure — that he'd not once actually been scared of the older werewolf looming over him. Just like he's not scared now, with Peter looking down at him, sitting so close, and with Stiles himself laid out in such a vulnerable position — his throat exposed, his stomach unshielded. He of course has a healthy sense of caution and suspicion when it comes to Peter's motives, and he probably always will with good reason, but actual fear…?

' _When did that change?'_

Peter arches a questioning eyebrow at him, lifts the Styrofoam cup to his lips to take a drink, and it occurs to Stiles that he's just been laying here staring at the man for a good couple of minutes now, not saying a thing.

His voice croaks when he speaks.

"We in LA yet?"

Peter nods.

"Venice Beach," the man clarifies. "But yes. Just a half-hour's drive from where we need to be. It's early though. They won't be open for another few hours."

"Open?" Stiles' brow furrows. He'd been picturing something more like a spy movie, a discrete exchanging of goods at a shady meeting place, not so much hours of operation at some store. "So it's like… a magic shop?"

Peter gives him a dry look, but _c'mon,_ it wasn't like he'd been given too many details about their little side-trip. Some mysterious contact in LA, someone that they found through _Deaton_ no less, and some sort of unknown item that could potentially answer all their questions — what the hell else was he supposed to think?

"A pawn shop," Peter says, exasperated, and Stiles can practically _hear_ the eye-roll in his tone.

"Excuse me, Mr. Sass, it was a legitimate question," Stiles mutters, keeping his voice down so that he doesn't wake up Liam, "Especially considering my experience with the supernatural so far — magic tree stumps and all that. A magic shop wouldn't really be that much of a stretch."

Peter hums noncommittally, directing his gaze back out the windshield, and he absentmindedly swirls his Styrofoam cup, like it's a glass of fine wine instead of cheap gas station coffee. Stiles purses his lips, and fumblingly reaches down to the side of his seat, tugging on the handle there until his seat lifts back upright — and he finally has an image to put with the sound of crashing waves.

The ocean stretches out in front of them and far into the distance on both sides, and any words that may have been on the tip of Stiles' tongue fades from his mind. The sand looks soft and smooth, the water blue and inviting. He can't remember the last time he'd actually been to the ocean — Beacon Hills being a land-locked town and all, hours away from the coast — Stiles wonders just how warm the water is this far into April.

"We can reach the Santa Monica Pier from here if we walk far enough," Peter says, gesturing off to their right.

Stiles sighs quietly, rubs at his eyes to clear the scenery-induced awe from his mind and he thinks of back home where everyone's stuck in some kind of forced state of happiness and likely completely out of control of their own thoughts and feelings — the concept of it sends a shiver of remembrance up his spine.

"We're not here to fuck around and do vacationy-tourist things," he says.

"No," Peter agrees, "But we do have a few hours to kill."

"Then we should use that time to go over what we _do_ know," Stiles says, feeling snappish, because he can't just go out and _have fun_ or whatever the hell Peter has in mind when eight hours back home, all sorts of terrible things could be happening beneath a twisted façade of bliss. "You can fill me in on whatever facts you guys have figured out so far, and anyways, someone could _recognize_ me if we go out, and surprisingly the last thing we need right now is you getting arrested or—"

Peter's hand closes around his wrist, and — Jesus, he'd been scratching at his arm again, pink lines of irritation streaking across his skin. It's not even like he's itchy or anything, he just keeps doing it, digging blunt nails in and clawing at random. His breath shakes when he exhales and Peter lets go.

"Alright, out of the car," Peter says abruptly and in a no-nonsense tone.

Stiles blinks, startled when Peter actually opens the driver's side door and climbs out of the car himself, and when Stiles doesn't immediately follow the wolf's lead, Peter turns back to lean in the doorway, his arms braced against the roof of the car and his eyebrows raised expectantly.

"What?" Stiles asks, uncomprehending.

"We're going for a run, or a jog if you prefer," Peter says. "Exercise helps anxiety. That's a fact."

He says it like it's explanation enough, and yeah, okay, Peter's right, exercise can help with anxiety. Stiles knows that, he's heard it enough at Rosenbrook, and there had been a gym/physical recreation hour at the facility for similar reasons, but why the hell _Peter_ knows that, and is actually using such knowledge in a way to benefit Stiles is what's throwing him off so much.

"But…" Stiles begins, except any protest he thinks up sounds weak even to himself, and Peter cuts him off before he can actually voice any of them.

"Stiles, there's not much point going over what we know when we don't yet have all the facts," Peter says reasonably, "And we won't _have_ all those facts until later on today when that pawn shop opens. Now _come on."_

The man slaps a hand against the roof of the car in a _hurry up_ gesture, then throws his door closed and turns away from Stiles. Stiles doesn't even get the chance to ask about Liam before Peter's opening up the back door and unceremoniously dragging the younger beta out of the backseat by one arm. While it seems like there's no way Liam could have completely slept through his and Peter's conversation, the kid still lets out a startled snarl that cuts away to a quick yelp when gravity and Peter's tugging dumps him none-too-gently out onto the pavement.

"Hey, be gentle with the puppy," Stiles says at the same time that Liam growls out, _"What the hell?"_

Stiles halfheartedly undoes his seat belt. His hands fumble with the door handle to let himself out just as Liam grumbles something and Peter says with a long-suffering tone, "Don't be a child, it's just a scratch. See? You're already healing, so get up; we're going for a run."

"—you kidding me? _It's the crack of dawn_." Liam's saying when Stiles finally drags himself out of the car.

Leaning against the side of the vehicle, Stiles folds his arms up on the roof and watches with a kind of vague indifference as the two wolves bicker, gold and blue eyes flashing and Liam's teeth sharpening. Stiles rolls his eyes and rests his cheek against his arms, taking a breath of the ocean air as he waits out the werewolf posturing going on in front of him. After a while, you just sort of get used to it, and he finds his eyes slipping closed with disinterest.

Several minutes go by and the two must come to some kind of agreement, because when Stiles next blinks his eyes open, Liam's standing out on the beach, shifting from foot to foot, impatiently waiting, and Peter's walking around the car to him, his thumbs hooked into his jeans' pockets in that typical aloof Hale way.

"Leave your hoodie in the car," Peter says, eyeing said clothing with a frown. "People are more likely to recognize a specific article of clothing than they are a person's face, and this hoodie has been described plenty in all those alerts about you. You're right in that we'll need to be careful about you being recognized." Peter's lips press together in contemplation, "With a few adjustments though, you should be able to fly under the radar easily."

"Adjustments?" Stiles echoes dubiously, but Peter offers no explanation, just flashes that annoying enigmatic smile that makes Stiles' teeth grit, and the man turns on his heel to head off to the beach.

Huffing out an irritated breath, Stiles sheds his hoodie and tosses it into the front seat before catching up to Peter — and he almost can't believe the situation he's in, going for a jog on some picturesque beach with Mr. Snark and Sociopathic-Tendencies himself, not that he doesn't understand Peter's reasoning for wanting to keep an anxious, fidgety teenager from stewing in a cramped car.

All bets are off though if Peter suggests joining in on any morning yoga meet-ups they might come across on the beach.

Stiles sets his pace at a steady jog right off, not really feeling up to running, and not caring what the two wolves decide to do either, especially considering that he wouldn't be able to keep up with them on a good day anyway. He'd long-since learned not to bother straining himself just trying to keep up with Scott when it had come to track and lacrosse and this is really no different.

The sand shifts under his feet and soon enough he reaches the boardwalk that spans the outer edges of the beach, and for the first few minutes, his mind races with thoughts of Scott and the pack and his father back home, and how he shouldn't be wasting his time with this, that he should be focusing on finding a solution, on fixing things — but then he breathes in the salt air, and a crisp wind breezes around him that only makes him shiver a little, and with each step he takes, the exertion from actually _moving_ grows a bit more and the thoughts get a bit quieter as he focuses on each step, on the impact of his feet against the boardwalk — and yeah, okay, he can see how exercising can help.

It takes him a moment to realize that Peter's been matching his pace this whole time, not seeming to care about how slow Stiles has been going, whereas Liam's long since raced ahead, not even bothering with the boardwalk like they were and just bounding across the sand instead.

Stiles watches the older wolf curiously out of the corner of his eye, and he almost tells Peter to go on ahead, that he's fine, he doesn't need watching, but… it's kind of nice, actually. Just jogging like this, having some company, even if it is Peter—

And unwillingly he's reminded of his last day back home before he'd left, running through the forest, and Peter showing up and…

Stiles snaps his eyes forward, mentally shakes the thoughts from his head and forces himself to speed up a bit despite everything inside himself telling him to keep it slow. He's not even really sure what he's trying to do, because Peter keeps up with him easily and it's not like he could ever reach a speed to outrun the werewolf, but it just — it feels good, and so he keeps going, pushes himself to go faster until his lungs burn and he's flying across the pavement, palm trees whipping by in his periphery—

His vision blurs, just for a moment, but it's enough to make him stumble and almost go pitching forward if not for the arms that immediately lock around his middle, slowing his steps to a stop. Stiles half-hangs in Peter's arms, wheezing, breath rattling in his chest, and his hands shake as he presses them to his eyes. There are people watching them, he knows, which is the very last thing they need right now.

Hurried footsteps race up to them and skid to a stop, and he hears Liam's quietly worried voice asking, "He okay?"

" _Fine_ ," Stiles grinds out, because he can answer for himself.

His shoulders tense when Peter makes a disapproving noise, but the older werewolf doesn't actually say anything, and Stiles doesn't fight it when he's dragged across the boardwalk and sat down on the ground somewhere away from foot-traffic. Stiles peers through his fingers to see that they're right outside an open storefront — one of those small one-room shops that sell clothes and other random souvenirs and cheap plastic accessories — and as soon as Peter's arms drop away from him, Stiles pulls his knees up to his chest and lowers his hands down to press his palms against the grit of the pavement and just focus on his breathing.

Liam sits right down on the ground next to him without any kind of prompting needed, and Stiles is vaguely aware of the annoyed and slightly cautious looks the shopkeeper is giving them, but Peter is quick to distract the woman by showing an enthusiastic interest in buying something. Stiles loses track of things by this point, just stares out at the beach and drags his hands back and forth against the pavement and inhales and exhales.

An unknown amount of time later, he startles when a hand drops down on his shoulder, but it's just Peter, who's holding a plastic bag and smiling. The man kneels down in front of him, and while Liam gives off a warning growl, Stiles is still a bit too busy trying to get his brain back online to do much more than just sit there when Peter pulls out a pair of black-framed glasses from the bag and slides them onto Stiles' face.

Stiles blinks, reality coming back to him just in time for Peter to tug a beanie cap over his head.

"What?" he asks dumbly.

"Like I said, _adjustments,_ " Peter says, and he drags Stiles to his feet.

Reaching back into the bag, Peter grabs what is apparently the 'finishing touch' to Stiles' new look; a brightly colored Venice Beach over-shirt that could only be described as 'touristy.' Stiles wrinkles his nose up at it — the glasses feeling awkward and abnormal when they shift on his face — but with a long-suffering sigh, he pulls on the over-shirt anyway, and he darts a quick look at the small round mirror mounted up on the wall just outside the shop. He frowns and eyes his reflection doubtfully.

"I look like a hipster."

Liam snaps a picture with his cellphone. He does look a little contrite though when Stiles shoots him a look.

"It works for you," Peter says. "And it makes you look less like yourself, which is the whole point."

Stiles isn't so sure. He doesn't _think_ he looks all that different — maybe at a quick glance, but not up against any kind of intense scrutiny. He supposes it's better than nothing though, and so he sighs and lets it go and doesn't drag his feet when the two wolves usher him away from the shop and back down the boardwalk. Very faintly in the distance, he can make out what he thinks may be the Santa Monica Pier — apparently he'd ran further than he realized — but they turn back the way they came because they really _aren't_ here for a fun get-away, and Stiles imagines the Pier's the sort of place you could easily lose track of time in.

They do stop for breakfast at a place along the boardwalk called the _Figtree's Café_ though, and Stiles finds himself completely overwhelmed by eating an actual meal that doesn't taste like it came from a hospital cafeteria. The groan of appreciation he makes could hardly be considered decent, and distantly he notices Peter shooting cold looks at anyone who glances their way.

It's nearly nine O'clock by the time they finish eating, and compared to the jog-turned-run from earlier in the morning, the rest of the walk back to the car could almost be considered leisurely, with Stiles following absentmindedly after the two wolves, casting his gaze about as they walk, and pushing the fake glasses further up his nose as he looks between the storefronts and the beach and the people walking around them. The air's grown warmer as the sun climbs higher in the sky, and everyone around them just seems so… unhurried and at ease. There are people jogging and running, some are walking their dogs, and one person skates by on rollerblades. Out on the beach, others are setting up towels or chairs, or running down to meet the waves lapping against the shore.

And it's all so very _normal_ and _unconcerned_ that when they finally get back to the car and Peter digs out that rather intimidating-looking bag of pills from the backseat, Stiles is… he finds himself actually _surprised_ at the sight of them. He almost laughs at the absurdity of it all, like he can't believe that he truly _forgot_ for a moment that this is his new normal.

In-patient admittance to a mental health facility, group therapies, daily psychiatric drugs — _that's_ his reality now, his very-much human routine to go alongside all the supernatural shit; certainly not companionable jogs along sunny beaches or dining at quaint little cafés. Seeing Peter pull out those pill bottles, it's almost like a punch to the gut, one that tickles in the most painfully hilarious way, and Stiles can't help the self-deprecating smile that stretches across his face.

He holds out his hand and Peter rattles out the correct number of pills into his palm — the man really _did_ read his file extensively — one, two, three, and here comes the soda shots. Stiles pitches them back into his mouth, takes a drag from the water bottle Peter offers him, and swallows them all down in one gulp.

He smacks his lips humorously, as if partaking in a delicious treat, grins and says, " _Tasty._ "

Peter rolls his eyes at Stiles' antics, but, curiously, Liam's shoulders hunch up and the younger boy turns away, climbing into the backseat of the car without another word.

It gives Stiles pause, makes the smile slip from his face, but before he can even question it, Peter claps a hand on his shoulder and says, "Time to go."

' _Right,_ ' Stiles thinks, ' _Time to get our Quest Item._ '

As they drive away from Venice Beach though, and gradually make their way deeper into LA traffic, Stiles can't help but cast a wary glance back at Liam, and when his stomach twists with nausea, he's not so sure it's because of the pills.

 

* * *

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I had more planned for this chapter, but it got to be a bit too long, so I decided to split the events up. Next chapter, you'll find out just what they've come all this way to get.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sanity is just the ability to ignore that intrusive thought about how easy it would be to simply turn the steering wheel and drive into oncoming traffic._
> 
> _Stiles turns the wheel._  
>  _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the crazy long wait guys! I hope you're all still interested and reading this. Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments and all the kudos and bookmarks! :D
> 
> (Who else was digging those Stiles and Liam shenanigans in tonight's new episode? I live for that shit.)
> 
> ****Self-harm warning for this chapter!!!****

* * *

 

 

**Chapter 7**

 

_Stiles is six when he crashes his bike and smacks his chin against the sidewalk. He remembers this because it had left behind a bloody cut on his chin that had eventually turned into a small scar — and because when a kid from school one day made fun of his scar, and he'd come home upset about it, his mother had looked him right in the eyes and told him that "Our scars make us who we are. There's a story behind each of them, and they're nothing to be ashamed of."_

_He remembers even more how she had hugged him, told him to ignore the boy at school because the scar on his chin was a badge of honor, something that he earned in learning how to ride his bike without training wheels._

_Standing in his bathroom, staring into that mirror, he remembers all of this now because the little scar on his chin_ _ **isn't there**_. _The skin is smooth, unblemished, and all at once, he wonders what else is missing, and how long it's been missing for — how he hadn't noticed until now. He_ _ **swears**_ _it'd been there before, that he'd seen it… just last week? Hadn't he? Except now he's not so sure and—_

_He strips off his clothes until only his boxers are left, and he twists and turns his body every which-way searching his skin, but no, they're — they're not there, they're_ _**gone** _ _, they're—_

_He doesn't remember breaking the mirror, but he must have._

_He doesn't even really remember making the first cut, it's just suddenly right there on his chin, where his scar used to be, dark red welling up — and it's like he's on the outside looking in, watching himself with a kind of horrified fascination as he begins making cut after cut._

_The scar on his elbow that time he fell off the roof playing spies with Scott._

_The one running across his left index and middle finger when he was nine and slipped while cutting vegetables._

_The one on his knee that time he'd managed to fall_ up _the stairs—_

_Stiles' hand trembles, and the mirror shard he's holding drips red_ — _blood trailing slowly down his pale skin and painting the bathroom floor in droplets and smears and small splatters, spotting the white ceramic sink and washing in diluted swirls down the drain._

— _the scar on his arm that he doesn't remember getting, but remembers always being there._

_The one across his right foot and left ankle, the first knuckle of his right hand, and another, and another—_

_And his moles aren't all right either, the patterns don't match up, not like how he remembers them, so he fixes those too with a quick jab, jab,_ _**jab** _ _—_

_He's panting; the air's coming in too quick._

_**Jab, jab, jab.** _

_Hands grab him, arms wrapping around him tight, but it's all happening so distantly, his dad pinning him to his chest and wrestling the mirror shard from his hand. He sees himself struggling, sees the tears welled up in bloodshot eyes, and very faintly, he can hear himself gasping out words._

" _No, no, no, please!"_

_There's a ringing in his ears._

" _Have to fix it—just—it's not right,_ _ **please**_."

_His legs give out, he's sinking to the ground and his dad's sinking with him._

"— _I just need to fix myself."_

_Because who is he without his scars?_

 

* * *

 

Apparently Peter Hale doesn't trust banks or the concept of leaving a paper trail because the aforementioned 'sizable cash exchange' is literally a shit-ton of crisp green bills _—_ twenties and fifties and hundreds, more money than Stiles has ever seen in his life _—_ and Peter carries it all packed into a nondescript backpack and slung over his shoulder like an aloof college student. Of course, Stiles figures that there's no better security than being a werewolf, and a part of him almost wants someone to try mugging Peter just so that he can see the resounding fallout.

No such incidence occurs though, not even when their destination takes them down a shadowed alleyway to a little hole-in-the-wall pawn shop tucked away in the back of a towering brick building. Stiles' nose wrinkles up at the faint rotten garbage smell that lingers in the alley air, and he glances between the two wolves — can't even imagine what it must smell like to them.

The shop itself has bars spanning across wide glass windows and a variety of large flashy signs plastered over every available surface. _PAWN SHOP_ displayed above _PAWN! BUY! SELL!_ _Cash for Gold_ and _In$tant Loan_ and _Yes, We Are Open!_ It's as innocent in appearance as Deaton's veterinary practice.

Peter's hand closes around Stiles' wrist, dragging him through the front entrance when he lingers a moment too long staring down at a large cockroach that's been crushed into the pavement — exactly the sort of charming city details he'd expect from the back alleys of LA.

Liam follows quietly behind, the younger wolf's eyes scanning their surroundings cautiously as they enter unfamiliar territory, though what he could possibly be looking out for, Stiles doesn't know. It's some mysterious contact of Deaton's, sure, but the place is small and cramped and filled with junk, and there's even a cheerful chime that announces their entrance. The place is probably as dangerous as any other pawn shop out there.

Or at least that's what Stiles thinks until his eyes are drawn to a small boy standing off to the side dusting, a boy who freezes at the sight of them and breathes out the word, _"Lobos._ " Now, Spanish may not be Stiles' strongest subject, but he can recognize the word ' _wolves'_ when he hears it — in a number of different languages at this point, given how much reading and translating he's done on the subject.

Even more startling than that though are the tiny fangs that poke out from under the boy's upper lip and the way those wide young eyes flash red — not the red of an alpha werewolf though, with the iris changing color, but rather the boy's sclera shimmers red in a way that Stiles has never seen before.

Liam rumbles warily behind him and Stiles eyebrows shoot up, not exactly sure how to proceed from here, but then Peter claps a steadying hand on his shoulder, unconcerned, and moves forward into the shop with an amicable smile on his face, barely even sparing a glance in the small child's direction. The boy in question immediately darts away from them and retreats in the same direction Peter seems to be heading; a glass checkout counter at the back of the shop where a tall woman stands, silently observing.

She appears to be in her 50s or 60s, dark hair pulled back into a tight bun and starting to go grey, with laugh-lines around her eyes and mouth — not that you can really tell though from the stern look on her face. She arches a single questioning eyebrow in their direction, her mouth pressed into a thin line and she looks about as thrilled to see them as the small boy is.

Of course, Peter doesn't seem at all fazed by the obvious unwelcoming atmosphere; the older man is probably used to such things at this point, and while Stiles and Liam stay a few paces back, Peter steps right up to the checkout counter and says lightly, "Hale, here to pick up a package for Deaton."

"Deaton didn't mention you," the woman says, looking down her nose at them, and Stiles suddenly feels like he's back in school, getting reprimanded by a teacher — and just how weird is _that_ feeling after all these months without any real classroom time, save for quietly working on homework packets his school sent over during Rosenbrook's ' _designated learning hours.'_

"As of right now," Peter says as he slips the backpack off his shoulder, pushing the conversation forward, "the entirety of Beacon Hills is indisposed of, Deaton included." And here he pauses to dump the backpack on the counter-top, pulling the zipper open to show the piles of cash packed haphazardly inside, "Do you want the money or not?"

Stiles has to hand it to the older woman, she doesn't even blink at the sight of all that money, just gives it a disinterested cursory look. For a moment, he worries that they might have a problem here, that the woman will only accept a deal with Deaton himself and they came all this way for _nothing —_ but then she shrugs, because apparently business is business regardless of exactly who it is that's bringing in the cash, and she pulls out one of those currency counter machines and passes it over to the small boy from before with quick instructions to _'make sure it's all there'_ before she disappears into the backroom.

Setting the clunky machine down onto the checkout counter, the boy clambers up onto a stool for easier access and immediately settles into the task. It must be something he's done plenty of times before, given how easily he operates the machine, and he only casts the occasional curious glance in their direction, the red fading out of his eyes. Stiles can't help but wonder what he is exactly, and if the older woman is one too, but they're here for more important things, and he figures he can always ask Peter later.

Just as the boy with the strange eyes counts out the last bill, the woman sweeps back into the room with a steel lockbox in her hands. It's definitely old —dinged and dented and worn down with age, and Stiles can tell that the blackened edges are from fire damage. He's sure Peter can too, but the older wolf gives no sign of recognition at the sight of it, so he doubts it's some long lost Hale artifact.

The contents of the box rattle around inside as the woman sets it down, briskly and without care. Whatever's in there means nothing to her, useless junk like almost everything else in the shop, something that someone probably pawned here years ago for forty bucks max because they needed gas money — and now they're just three morons who drove hundreds of miles to get it. He knows that whatever's in there is supposed to help, that's what Peter and Liam kept saying, but somehow Stiles doesn't think it's going to be the cure-all they're searching for. Call him cynical, but their luck is never that good.

"It all there?" the woman asks the boy, eyeing the stacks of cash, and as soon as the boy nods and makes a noise of confirmation, she slides the box over to them, as easy as that, and Stiles almost wants to say ' _What, that's it?'_

Peter reaches out, his hand hovering over the box for a fraction of a second before he draws back, and the woman's lips quirk up in a little smile.

"Problems, wolf?"

"Stiles," Peter says, flashing a fanged grin in the woman's direction, but otherwise paying her no mind. "Be a dear and open that box for me, I'd like to inspect what I just spent eight grand on."

"What?" Stiles says, faltering, and then he back-tracks, "Eight _thousand_ dollars? For _that?"_

"Yes, hardly seems worth it for miserable little Beacon Hills — its current happy state notwithstanding," Peter says with a put-upon sigh, and he nudges Stiles over to the checkout counter.

Not wasting time with asking why _he's_ the one who has to open the box — from the slightly smug look on the woman's face earlier, he's sure there's some sort of wolfy reason — Stiles tentatively reaches out, his mouth pressed into a thin line. For eight grand, there better be a magic golden dagger inside.

He nudges lightly at the sides of the lockbox in the same way someone would check to see if a pan's too hot, with overly-cautious and hesitant touches, and when nothing of significance happens, he flips the latch holding it closed and slowly, so very carefully lifts up the lid.

And stops.

And blinks.

And lets the steel lid of the lockbox clang open against the glass counter-top, because _really?_ They drove nine hours for this? A stained hunk of wood — which looks _broken_ , by the way — and several pieces of paper? Of course, there's writing on the paper, but important information or not, there's no way it's all worth eight thousand dollars.

"A wooden stake?" Liam says, drawing Stiles' attention back to the two wolves behind him — and yes, he supposes the piece of wood could be a stake, once upon a time before what was probably the pointy end was broken off. "So, what, we're fighting vampires?"

"I doubt it's as simple as that," Peter says, stepping up behind Stiles to stare over his shoulder at the contents of the box, yet still for some reason keeping his distance, "and anyway, the vampires you've read about in books don't exist, certainly not ones that feed on an entire town's sadness until only _unnaturally_ _blissful happiness_ is left. Other blood-suckers, however…"

And here, Peter pauses to cast a sardonic look up at the older woman, seeming entirely too pleased with himself.

She looks less than impressed to say the least, arches an eyebrow and says dryly, "Thank you for that not-at-all subtle comment."

Peter holds up his hands, smiling with a kind of ' _well, if the shoe fits'_ look on his face, and says in his defense, "To be fair, you _are_ asking for quite a lot of money here — oh, I'm sorry, did you think I was referring to your supernatural status here?" he grins, eyes flashing blue, "How politically incorrect of me."

The woman is not at all amused; her own eyes shimmering back red, just like the young boy's eyes had been.

"Regardless of that," Peter says, quickly moving on, "For some scraps of paper and a chunk of wood, even if that wood is _mountain ash_ , I hardly think the contents of this box is worth eight grand."

Ah, mountain ash, that would explain why he's the only one from their group fishing through said box. Stiles nudges the thick piece of mountain ash with one hand, lightly rubbing his fingers over the dark stains coating its surface.

He really hopes that's not blood — because _gross._

He pulls his hand back, wipes his fingers against the hideous over-shirt he's wearing.

It certainly doesn't look like blood — too dark, a black oil-like color really, whereas dried blood would be more of a brown. Either way, it's not exactly the magic 'fix-it' item he'd been expecting. Whatever help it may have been at some point, someone had worn out any usefulness the thing had long ago.

"Look, if you don't want it," the woman says, appearing indifferent on the matter, "I'm sure the people who were looking it over yesterday would be happy to take it off my hands."

"Wait, other people?" Liam cuts in, taking a wary step forward, "Do you think there are other places being affected by the same thing? Maybe this is more widespread than we realized."

"Well… no, I don't think that was the case with this group," the woman admits, and when she looks over at Liam, some of the hostility fades from her eyes. It's clear that her problem is with Peter's _charming_ personality and not so much with werewolves in general _—_ or maybe it's just the puppy eyes Liam seems to be so good at; Scott McCall's beta indeed.

After a moment's hesitation, she continues to explain, "Said they were collectors, some kind of strange… romance-themed Dungeons and Dragons group?" She makes a random hand gesture and shrugs, like she has no idea how else to really explain it. "They didn't seem to be at all in-the-know about the supernatural. Could have flashed my fangs and they'd think it was costumed special effects. Get a lot of people like that around LA here. Wouldn't surprise me if they wanted this stuff because it's old and the stake would make a good prop."

"And you really think some nerdy role-playing group would be able to afford the eight thousand you're asking for this?" Peter asks doubtfully, a long-suffering look on his face.

"Maybe I like them more than I like you," the woman says haughtily, "Give them a _friends and family_ discount — and anyway, you seem like you need it more, and I _am_ running a business here."

For a good long moment, the two stare each other down; teeth sharp and eyes flaring red and blue, and Stiles can't help but worry that Peter's going to turn this into the kind of teeth and claws encounter he seems so fond of — the outcome of which Stiles has no way of predicting considering that he still doesn't know what the woman even _is,_ not to mention the fact that neither Peter nor the woman appear at all concerned with losing in a fight against the other — but just as Stiles turns towards Peter and twists a nervous hand up in the older werewolf's shirt, because god, he is just so not ready for any kind of supernatural showdown just yet, Peter bites out an annoyed, "Four thousand for the box."

The woman grins widely, and suddenly Stiles can see how she got so many smile lines over time.

"Sorry my furry friend," she says. "Can't go under the eight thousand. It may look like junk, but I paid a pretty penny for it."

"If by 'pretty penny' you mean an _actual_ penny," Peter growls, "And I'm sure you're aware that's not how bartering works. _Five thousand_ for the box full of junk _."_

"Tell ya what," she says, giving Peter the look of a sales person about to offer them a _great deal,_ "you pay the full eight thousand and I'll even throw in a cleansing ritual that might help whatever's mucking up your friend there."

And here, Stiles freezes, because the older woman is looking at _him_ now, her eyes narrowed with a kind of curious and calculating glint to them, unnerving to the point where Stiles takes a few faltering steps back until he walks right into Peter. The older werewolf presses a steadying hand down onto his shoulder.

"What?" Stiles blurts out.

" _Hueles mal,_ " the little boy seated on the stool says with a simple shrug, only for the woman to lightly swat him upside the head a second later.

"Hey now, don't be rude!" she scolds.

" _Lo siento,_ " the boy immediately says, shoulders hunched up apologetically, though he does mutter quietly under his breath after, " _Es cierto…"_

Hand tightening on Stiles' shoulder, Peter draws him back until he's standing behind the older werewolf, effectively blocking him from the woman and child's line-of-sight.

"I can assure you," Peter says, tone lackadaisical, yet Stiles can clearly see a challenge in the man's stance, "that the scent you're picking up on is the doctor-prescribed medication in his system, _much_ more effective than any sort of cleansing ritual."

The woman seems to tense up at the condescension that's clear in his words, her eyes flaring red again and a hint of fang poking out from her pursed lips.

"How about this for a deal," Peter plows forward without pause, confident as always, "I pay the full eight grand for the lockbox _and_ for your services as a future business contact in all things supernatural and otherwise. You seem like a fairly well-connected person, and maybe one day I'll need assistance with… oh, I don't know, gathering information on some subject."

"I don't know, you seem like a real asshole to deal with," the woman says, arms crossed over her chest with a look of clear distaste on her face, "Hardly seems fair."

"For eight thousand dollars?" Peter says, and then he shrugs, "Take it or leave it."

Mouth pressed into a tight frown, she turns the offer over in her head for a few minutes, before she finally sighs, "As long as you understand that whatever assistance you may be after won't always be free, and that I can tell you to fuck off if I don't agree with it."

Peter holds out one hand, a pleased smile on his face, "Of course."

The woman gives him another look of distaste, but she shakes his hand anyway, as briefly as she can get away with. Reaching behind the cash register, she pulls out a business card and holds it out to Peter between two fingers, grudgingly introducing herself as Lorena Flores.

"Peter Hale," he offers in return, tucking the business card away in his back pocket, "It's a pleasure."

"Yes, charmed, I'm sure," the lovely Ms. Flores drawls, rolling her eyes. "Would you just take your box and _go?_ "

Later, as Peter's leading them back through the alley—this time with Stiles carrying the backpack and the lockbox tucked inside, seeing as how he's only one in their group who can actually hold onto it — Liam finally blurts out what they had both apparently been wondering this whole time, "So what exactly _were_ they?"

Peter tosses an amused look over his shoulder at them, asks, "What, you couldn't smell the goat's blood on their breath?"

"I mean," Liam stutters defensively, "I smelled _something,_ I just wasn't sure what."

Looking almost delighted at the admission, Peter shakes his head, sighing something about _young wolves,_ and simply says, "Chupacabras, of course. Perfectly harmless unless you're a farm animal or house pet."

 

* * *

 

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I was going to go into detail about what the box contained, but the chapter was getting to be too long between this scene and the next, so I've split that part up for the next chapter. Luckily, that next chapter is mostly written, so you won't have to wait too long for it. 
> 
> (True story, when I was briefly living out in LA, I had a job as a costumed zombie. When I would get off of my shift at 10pm, I wouldn't bother with removing the special effects makeup until I got home, so I'd drive home and walk through the streets of LA with my face all bloody and torn up and zombified, and I swear, I only ever got one reaction from it. I walked through crowds of people and no one even batted an eye. There was just this one valet guy who thought someone had attacked me and got all defensive and concerned for me. Like, yeah, it was October, but it wasn't even that close to Halloween. LA, man, they're desensitized to that shit.)


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Peter Hale is dressed as an orderly..._  
>  Stiles is about 98% sure that this isn't going to end well.  
> _______
> 
> Stiles supposes he doesn't mind Peter's visits. It brings a nice change from the facility's usual routine of group therapies and medication adjustments — but then Peter shows up wanting to drag Stiles back to Beacon Hills to deal with the next big shit storm and Stiles hasn't even recovered from the last one.
> 
> (Or the one where the nogitsune did more damage than they realized, and Stiles is less than okay.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter for you all! The box is opened finally...
> 
> **Also, I was trying to do something a little different with the different fonts, but if that's too difficult to read, let me know. I can always change it back to regular text!

* * *

 

 

 

**Chapter 8**

 

_Stiles has done a lot of crazy, stupid shit throughout his life, but never something so bad as to put a look of fear on his father’s face quite like **that**. Even when he'd had his first panic attack after his mom died, his dad hadn't looked as terrified as he did when he'd found Stiles in the bathroom slicing his body up with a shard of broken mirror. _

_When the tears and the screaming and the mind-numbing hysteria had finally stopped, and his dad had him downstairs on the couch wrapped up tightly in a blanket and was sure that Stiles wasn't about to bleed out, his dad’s first real reaction on how to fix this is to pick up the phone and call an ambulance to come get them — and that's when Stiles realizes that this has devolved so far beyond what either of them can handle, when his dad isn't even confident enough to drive Stiles to the hospital himself because he’s too worried that Stiles might try to hurt himself along the way there._

_He won’t. Stiles swears he won’t, but it’s a little hard to convince someone of that when just minutes before, he’d been trapped in a self-destructive haze._

_It doesn’t stop him from trying though._

_“You don’t— you don’t need to call an ambulance,” he says, watching as his dad paces back and forth restlessly, “You can drive me. I’ll— I’ll be good. I won’t do anything. I **swear.** ”_

_His dad stops and turns to him and — Stiles knows that look. That’s the look that says, ‘_ I wish I could trust you, but I can’t.’ _It’s a look he’s become so very accustomed to ever since Scott got bitten and before his dad knew the truth. It’s one he hasn’t seen for a while now. Seeing it here and now hurts more than it’s ever hurt before._

_Stiles hugs the blanket more tightly around himself, and this time, when the tears start to fall, it’s more out of frustration and helplessness than anything else._

_“I **won’t!** ” he stresses, his voice pitching high as he looks pleadingly up at the man. “You— you can even call Parrish to come and drive us there. **I don’t need an ambulance.** ”_

_His dad kneels down in front of him._

_“I **don’t** ” Stiles says, more quietly._

_His dad wraps him up in a tight hug._

_“I don’t,” Stiles shakes his head against the man’s shoulder, his voice falters, “I—_ _I’m **fine.** ”_

_He’s anything **but** fine though. And he knows that his dad is doing the right thing. He knows that this is how these sort of situations go — he remembers reading the training pamphlets at the station — that the quickest way for him to get help is to have an ambulance take him in to the ER — and Stiles isn’t talking about getting help for his cuts, that those are really just a symptom of the overall problem. _

_He knows all of this, but it doesn’t stop him from shaking apart in his dad’s arms._

_“Can I at least get on some clothes before they get here?” he asks tearfully._

_His dad doesn’t point out that he’ll probably have to take any clothes he puts on right back off so that they can treat the cuts. Instead, his drags Stiles up to his feet, and together, they trudge down the hall to the small laundry room off in the corner of the house. It’s closer than going upstairs to Stiles’ room, and it seems that his dad isn’t about to let Stiles out of his sight, so it works. He isn’t sure if the sweatpants and BHPD t-shirt that his dad picks up off the clothes pile are clean, but he can’t find it in himself to care._

_Stiles is quiet when the ambulance arrives. Any protests he’d had before has drained out of him by this point. He goes with the paramedics without a fight, all too aware of the watchful eyes of their neighbors, and when his dad climbs into the back of the ambulance with him, Stiles grabs hold of the man’s hand and doesn’t let go for the duration of the ride._

 

* * *

Stiles watches with a kind of detached interest as Peter pours a _Five Hour Energy_ shot into what’s likely his third cup of coffee for the day and he wonders how the man’s heart hasn’t exploded yet. Even werewolves have their limits, and healing powers or not, there’s no way that kind of thing can be healthy. Aside from a slight cringe at the taste though, Peter appears completely unfazed, and after a few minutes drag by without any kind of horrific reaction to the ungodly concoction, Stiles drops his gaze down to the coffee shop table they’re seated around and the potentially worthless junk they _—_ or rather Peter _—_ just spent eight grand on.

Scraps of old handwritten notes are scattered haphazardly about the table _—_ the contents of the steel lockbox upended and spread out between the three of them along with food and drinks and a laptop Peter had apparently brought along for their little mission. While Peter makes use of the shop’s free Wi-Fi, the rapid clicking of keys a continuous background noise as the man searches through any potentially useful keywords they’ve pulled from the notes so far, Liam carefully picks through each note with a kind of focused intensity, organizing them chronologically from the looks of it, and Stiles just kind of… watches.

The hand writing is a little difficult to read, the kind of aged script you’d expect to be reading on parchment paper, but at the very least, it’s all in English _—_ dating back to 1892 if the notes as well as the marked date on one very official looking letter are to be believed. It’s easy to see what was written first, a list of names and dates, where each letter is scrawled out calm and neat in a kind of professional detachment.

 

> _Marie Burnell – Aug, 1892_
> 
> _Edith Glass – Nov, 1892_
> 
> _Charlie Stout – Nov, 1892_
> 
> _Emeline Cigrand – Dec, 1892_
> 
> _Irene O'Guinn – Feb, 1893—_

Stiles can’t be completely sure if the notes once belonged to a hunter, but whoever the writer was, they were an investigator of some kind, and this had started out as just another job for them, another mystery among what were likely many others. There are over a dozen names on the list, the majority of them female, and whether they are victims or suspects, the writer doesn’t specify _—_ though the next note suggests possible missing persons, if not people affected by the unusual blissful state—

 

> _ Symptoms include: _
> 
> _-boundless happiness_
> 
> _-unnatural paleness in many_
> 
> _-feverish sweating in some_
> 
> _-complete lack of concern for self or others (including missing friends or family)_
> 
> _-unknown black substance*_
> 
> _*An odd dark substance, black like an oil stain, was found in the homes of many of the affected, staining sinks and ringing the drains of bathtubs. When questioned about the substance, subjects claimed they could not recall how the stains came to be, or when they first appeared. Subjects were also completely unconcerned with this gap in knowledge._

 

From there, the handwriting gradually grows more erratic, and while the notes don’t appear to be in any kind of _hunter’s code,_ much of what’s written is vague at best.

>  
> 
> _Small green stone shards, found in the homes of two – a coincidence?_
> 
> _~~**stone shards and sample of dark substance have been sent to GS for testing, awaiting results.~~ _
> 
> **_ Results inconclusive! Resembles nothing familiar to biology, mineralogy or geology! _ **

 

Stiles can’t be sure if the writer had been concerned with their musings falling into the wrong hands, or if it was just that their thought process became more fractured the deeper they fell into their investigation—

 

> _~ April 8, 1893_
> 
> _I have been picking up random surges, a strange and unsettling wrongness that is clear to the senses, yet only I seem to be aware of the phenomenon. Never-ending smiles persist, yet to them, **I** am the unhinged one. _
> 
> _Dreadful sensation grows stronger based on my location, pursuing on foot, narrowing down potential target._

 

—which is all too uncomfortably familiar to him.

 

> _~ April 11, 1893_
> 
> _Happiness infectious? Spreading rapidly…_
> 
> _Dear sir, why is your hotel so big?_

And then there are the last few notes, as well as the aforementioned official business letter, that are splattered and stained with what Stiles is guessing was that unknown dark substance the writer had previously described _—_ any important details having been blotted out more than a century ago, with the content that remained painting a chilling picture.

 

> _~ April 14, 1893_
> 
> _I glimpsed it for just a second while on the premises,_ ████ ██  █████████ █ ███ ██████ █ ████████████████████
> 
> _Attempts at retrieval have_ ███ ████████ ██ ██████████
> 
> _He is trifling with that beyond our understanding!_

He can admit that it’s interesting, what’s written down on the notes, and there does seem to be a connection between what’s happening in Beacon Hills and whatever it was the writer of the notes had been dealing with—

 

 

> _~April 15, 1893_
> 
> ██ █  ██████████ ██████ █ _███_ █████████████████ _███_ ███ █████████
> 
> ████████████████ _███_ █████████ █████
> 
> _Suspect is growing wise of my intentions_ _███_ ████ ███ _Requesting_ _███_ ████ ███ ██████ _from GS and proceeding with extreme caution._

—but staring down at all those scraps of paper and the hurried, almost frantic writing they contain is just much too reminiscent of his bedroom walls all those months back when the nogitsune was first sinking its claws into him…

 

           

He can almost see the phantom image of red strings over-laying the paper scraps, a web of interconnecting threads binding all the clues together in blood and chaos, and he just… keeps staring, doesn’t even blink until it all goes out of focus and—

A foot presses against his shin and Stiles’ breath catches for just a moment, his eyes snapping up to Peter sitting across from him, yet the older wolf has his eyes down on the laptop still, typing without pause like he’s not even paying attention to Stiles. The foot, Peter’s foot, nudges him lightly and Stiles shakily exhales, unclenches his hands from where he’d been unknowingly digging his nails into his palms. He rubs at his eyes, fingers wedged up under the fake glasses, and he has this sudden urge to just curl in on himself and press his forehead against the table and shut out the world — it’s what the other patients at Rosenbrook would call a ‘down-moment,’ would say to him ‘ _Don’t worry, Stiles, it’ll pass’_ and then they’d leave to give him space unless he asked them to stay.

He doesn’t do any of that though, curl up and shut down. He just readjusts the glasses, and breathes, and lets his hands flop down onto his lap. The foot drops away, the silence stretching between them for only a matter of seconds before Peter says lightly, as if the entire thing hadn’t happened, “Anything of note I should be looking up about that hunk of wood, Stiles?”

To his right, Liam stiffly grabs another note to read over, pretending to ignore them both, and Stiles can’t help the way his shoulders hunch up, a tinge of embarrassment curling in his gut. His eyes drop down to the table again; he hates this vulnerability he keeps letting through. Biting his lip, Stiles quickly reaches out to grab the broken piece of mountain ash _—_ the _conduit_ the letter spoke of, if he’s guessing right _—_ from where he’d previously set it down in the corner furthest away from the two wolves, right next to the muffin and hot cocoa Peter bought for him despite Stiles’ protests that he really wasn’t hungry. He turns the mountain ash around in his hands, at first staring at it without really looking, eyes unfocused as wordless thoughts of self-hatred swirl around in his head _—_ until the fact that it feels a lot heavier than it should be pushes to the forefront of his mind.

Brow furrowing in confusion, he looks at the conduit more closely, actually taking note of all the tiny little details. The wood is stained with the same black substance that the notes and letter are marked with, and it looks like there may have been etchings carved into it, but they’re indecipherable at this point, worn away with age and filled in with that dark gunk. He runs his fingers over it lightly, feeling for any differences in the wood’s texture while at the same time being careful of the broken, jagged end _—_ when his thumb brushes over it.

Opposite of the broken end, at the flat center of where the stake’s been cleanly cut, is a clear difference in texture, from rough wood grain to something almost smooth. Frowning, Stiles flips the stake over to the flat end, but he can’t quite make out any real difference through the black stains, and scratching at it with his thumbnail does very little to clear it away. Humming to himself, his eyes dart around the table briefly before he snatches up a stack of napkins, dipping them into his hot cocoa without a second thought and immediately setting to work at scrubbing away the stains.

Around him, both werewolves stop and stare.

“What…?” Liam starts to say.

“This thing is heavier than it should be,” Stiles mutters, scrubbing harder. “There’s something else here.”

It takes some effort, the black stuff is really caked on, but slowly he manages to wear it away, layer by gradual layer, until finally he sees it, a solid glossy red beneath. A… a gemstone, he realizes, a big one too, and embedded deep into the center of the stake, like someone had carved out the gem’s exact shape into the mountain ash and wedged the rock inside.

“Looks like… a ruby, maybe?” Stiles says, unsure. He holds out the stake for the other two to see.

“Hmm, peculiar, but not entirely unexpected,” Peter says, a contemplative look on his face, “There are many useful properties involved with different types of stones and gems. It’s worth looking into what exactly a ruby has to offer _—_ or any other kind of red gem, since I’m not exactly a mineralogist.”

“Might give us more of a clue what we’re dealing with,” Liam says, tossing the scrap of paper he’d been looking at back down to the table among all the other, “since these cryptic notes aren’t exactly helpful.”

“Actually, I think I may have found something,” Peter says, his eyes dropping back down to his laptop. There’s a definite note of interest in his voice as he goes on to explain, “Most of the names from the list didn’t yield many results, though given how long ago this happened, that’s hardly a surprise. There was one though, Emeline Cigrand, 1892, is known for her alleged death at the hands of a Dr. Henry H. Holmes, otherwise known as one of America’s first serial killers.”

“So that makes this a list of victims,” Liam says. He pulls the list towards him to look it over again.

“Missing persons more like,” Peter corrects, “given that the writer likely wasn’t aware that they were dead yet. That factor is irrelevant though. What we can take away from this is that, based on the dates of all the other notes, and what is known of H. H. Holmes’ murder spree, all of this took place in Chicago, where at the time, Holmes had just finished construction of his ‘murder castle’ – otherwise disguised as a rather large hotel.”

Stiles’ eyes dart down to one note in particular.

_Dear sir, why is your hotel so big?_

“Murder castle?” Liam says, just a touch incredulous. The list crinkles in his hands. He sets it down on the table abruptly, a pinched look on his face, “Sound’s charming.”

“It’s fascinating, really,” Peter says, and he sounds almost a tad too intent on the subject. There’s an intrigued gleam in his eyes as they dart across his computer screen, skimming through the details, “Its construction was quite elaborate – with false floors and secret passages, a labyrinth of windowless rooms and doors leading to nowhere, rooms that were basically gas chambers and chutes that could dump bodies down into the basement. He even had a kind of surgical torture room,” here Peter pauses to cast them a wry look, “And people call _me_ a monster…”

“Okay…” Stiles says slowly, trying to connect the dots in his head, but failing to come up with a clear picture, “So Holmes was killing people and the writer was investigating it. How does that help us back home?”

“What, you think this serial killer is back as some kind of ghost?” Liam cuts in quickly, fixing Peter with a disturbed, wide-eyed look, “Like… like maybe some kind of cursed object of his made it to Beacon Hills and he’s turned it into his new hunting grounds?”

“Hardly,” Peter drawls with a roll of his eyes. “No, I don’t think Holmes is at all involved with what’s going on in Beacon Hills. For one thing, we haven’t had a sudden influx of missing people. That’s enough to set the two cases apart. The connection we should be taking from this is the spell of happiness affecting both Beacon Hills and the citizens of Chicago back in 1893 – and I’m speaking figuratively here, since we can’t actually be sure yet if it _is_ a spell that’s influencing everyone.”

“Sounds like Holmes was just using the happiness as a distraction,” Stiles says, turning the evidence over in his head, looking at all angles, because maybe the reason _why_ will lead to any answer of _how,_ “so people wouldn’t pick up on his… serial killer vibe. Maybe that’s all it is back at Beacon Hills, a distraction.”

“It’s possible,” Peter says, pausing to take another drink of his caffeine concoction — he cringes again, “but we need to account for the other details as well. This note here says he’s messing with something ‘ _beyond our understanding._ ’ That suggests something… dark, for lack of a better word,” Peter waves his hand around in a random gesture, eyes to the ceiling, “something that sounds like more than just people being forced into a happy state.”

Stiles slouches in his chair, drumming his finger against the mountain ash stake as he says questioningly, “So, like, maybe he was doing more than just killing people? Maybe he was fucking with some kind of… black magic, or something?”

They still don’t know enough, and Stiles feels like they’re fumbling around blindly in the dark for answers. There are just too many variables here, too many possibilities. He sighs and sets the mountain ash stake back onto the table with a forceful _thunk._ He buries his face in his hands, glasses pushed up to his forehead. Words muffled, he asks, “Is there anything else you guys noticed from back home? Any other clue?”

There’s a pause, and then Liam blurts out, “The marking!” it’s enough for Stiles to glance up through his fingers, and the younger wolf hesitantly adds, “—though, we don’t know anything else about those, so it’s not really any more helpful than the rest of this…”

“Markings?” Stiles asks, this time directing his gaze to Peter.

“Yes, on people’s arms,” Peter says, his pointer finger tapping out a pattern on his forearm. Head tilted just slightly to the side as he stares down at Stiles’ hunched form, there’s a note of curiosity to his voice as he adds, “Just as you suggested, Stiles. I started checking the newly affected after that dream of yours and there they were."

Yet another unexplainable connection to himself, and Stiles groans as he warily asks, “What did they look like?”

“Like… puncture marks?” Liam says haltingly, searching for the right words, “But in a spiral shape.”

Puncture marks… as in needles? _Great._

“We didn’t notice them before because they healed too quickly,” Peter says, which is another strange variable, as if there aren’t enough already.

“Deaton had never seen anything like them either,” Liam mutters, sorting through the notes half-heartedly and picking one up at random, “and there wasn’t anything in the Beastiary about it. He said that magic does sometimes leave behind marks, but we just don’t know enough about the situation to narrow down if that’s even what it’s from.”

Stiles’ hands drop down to the tabletop, tapping out a random beat. He feels drained and restless all at the same time, stuck in what seems to be an impossible situation with no answers in site. He leans back in his seat and folds his arms tight across his chest to keep his hands still, mumbles out loud more to himself than to the two wolves sitting around him, “So what do we know then… People are happy, and it spreads quickly. Whatever it is leaves behind weird marks on their arms, and for some reason I’m having dreams about the whole thing. “

He’s got nothing. He feels like there should be something here, among all these notes, but nothing really rings a bell. He vaguely remembers reading about Holmes during one of his many Wikipedia binges, but that’s about it. Nine-plus hours, hundreds of miles, and eight thousand dollars later they’re just left with more questions than answers.

Liam leans forward, adding a bit unsurely, “It affects banshees differently than everyone else? Lydia’s in that coma…”

Peter hums, but then shakes his head, dismissing the clue, “Lydia is frequently an anomaly in these kinds of things, so that’s not much to go on.”

There’s got to be something they’re missing.

“ _None of this_ is much to go on,” Liam says with a brief yellow flash of his eyes and a hint of a snarl rising up in his throat, “not even the connection we found with Chicago!”

Peter heaves a sigh, and Stiles finds his focus drawn to the older wolf — watches as Peter slouches in his seat just so slightly. Cool blue eyes shut briefly as he rubs at the bridge of his nose, brows furrowed.

Liam grabs at a couple more notes, hands fisting up around the old paper as he reads them over furiously, like there’s something he had missed before, something that will give them all the answers. His mouth presses into a thin line, and a moment later a fang pokes out and punctures his lip. The tension around their table is suffocating, and Stiles feels like maybe people are starting to stare — then Liam throws the notes back onto their table and stands up, his chair scraping noisily against the tile and now people are _definitely_ staring. The younger wolf doesn’t seem to notice or care though, and he mutters something about the bathroom before disappearing into the back of the shop.

Stiles shoulders draw up to his ears and he looks away; ignores the smattering of people seated around them, the curious glances tossed their way, though no one appears overly concerned. It’s like Ms. Flores said, the LA crowd, they probably think their little group is working on a screenplay or something, and Liam just stormed off because of creative differences, that’s all—because what else could it possibly be?

He fiddles with the fake glasses, pushes the black frames further up his nose. His gaze drops down to the table, staring at the mess of notes without seeing. There really doesn’t seem like much to go on here; large gaps in knowledge, pieces of the puzzle missing. The writer must have figured it out though, whatever it was that had happened back in Chicago — because otherwise, Chicago would be known as the happiest city in the world today. Plus, the writer did specifically ask for the mountain ash stake—the letter called it a _conduit…_

Maybe there’s some clue with the letter?

Stiles zeroes in on the worn and creased piece of paper, skims over the faded typewritten words— _Dear Mr. W. S—_ he runs his fingers over the dark splatters, wondering what clues may be hidden beneath — _commercial traveler—_ what did that even mean?

His eyes fall to the closing line, specifically the signature.

_Gorham Mfg. Co._

“Who’s Gorham… or _what’s_ Gorham?” Stiles asks. He looks up just in time to catch Peter rubbing at his eyes, and he almost asks if the man’s okay, but the question gets caught in his throat.

“What?” Peter asks with a slow blink. He reaches out for his cup of coffee again, quirks an eyebrow in Stiles’ direction as he takes a long drink. “Gorham?”

“Yeah, um—“ Stiles looks back down at the letter, flips it around for Peter to see and taps at the closing line and signature, at the _Gorham Mfg. Co._

Peter hums into his cup of coffee. He drags the letter closer, scanning through it quickly, “Gorham Manufacturing Company.” His lips quirk up in amusement and he sets his coffee down. “It was a popular silversmith company, if I’m remembering correctly.” He huffs a laugh, “How… _convenient._ ”

“As convenient as Mr. Argent’s gun company,” Stiles says, catching on.

Peter makes a small noise of acknowledgment and turns his attention back to his laptop. The rapid clicking of keys starts up once more, his blue eyes flying across the screen. Stiles watches him for a moment, the intent look on his face as he follows yet another lead, and at first, Stiles wonders why Peter even seems to care, like what ulterior motive the man has here, because Stiles is sure there is one—

But then he realizes that that’s… not quite accurate, is it? Ulterior motive or not, for as much as Peter gripes about _miserable Beacon Hills,_ when the situation is truly dire and help is absolutely needed, Peter is right there with the rest of them, ready to dive into the thick of it and solve whatever mystery of the week they face with the same fervor that Stiles has… or once had…

Stiles looks away, absentmindedly scratches at his arm before he catches himself and tensely jerks his hand away, fingers shaking just-so-slightly. His eyes fall to the muffin Peter got him, and he decides to distract himself by tearing off chunks of it, alternating between dropping the pieces into his hot cocoa and stuffing the rest into his mouth. It sits faintly sweet on his tongue, but otherwise tasteless, and he crumbles it between his fingers; sticky sugar grains getting stuck under bitten nails. He’s still not hungry, but it’s something to do—a better way to direct these unconscious self-destructive tendencies.

“’ _Commercial Traveler’_ is just a fancy term for a traveling salesman,” Peter says — either not noticing Stiles’ lapse in self-control or just pretending not to notice to give him some semblance of privacy to deal with it on his own. The man drinks down the last of his coffee/energy drink mix in-between pauses in typing and goes on to say, “It’d be a good cover, employing hunters under the guise of silver salesmen, and sending them out across the country to investigate potential cases. Gorham would certainly have enough money to fund such an operation.”

Stiles hums in agreement, dropping the remains of his muffin onto the table and grabbing a fistful of napkins to clean his hands. It would seem that where there’s silver, there are hunters — a calling card that’s apparently not Argent’s alone.

As Peter continues to type and click and sift through information on the internet, Stiles glances in the direction of the bathrooms. There’s still no sign of Liam, and he wonders if maybe he should go check on the kid, make sure he’s not wolfed-out in the men’s room and tearing up rolls of toilet paper or something. Stiles drums his fingers on the table restlessly and he turns slightly in his chair, about to get up, when a slow and deep inhalation catches his attention — the sound of Peter fighting back a yawn.

Stiles blinks in surprise, gaze snapping back over to Peter just as the man rests his chin on one hand, elbow up on the table, and types out in sluggish keystrokes with his other hand.

“The Chicago World’s Fair was also just starting up in 1893,” the older wolf says in an almost absentminded away, sounding more like he’s talking to himself than talking to Stiles at this point, “Gorham reportedly sent out some salesmen to the fair to sell their wares, so that matches up too.“ He blinks slowly, then rapidly, then rubs at his eyes, muttering, “Unfortunately, ownership of Gorham has exchanged hands several times over the last century, so if there were any records about this particular case, they’ve long since been buried, and we’re not exactly in a position to go looking for them.”

He’d known before that Peter likely hadn’t slept the previous night, but now Stiles wonders when exactly was the last time the older werewolf got any rest at all. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Peter look this tired before.

Peter reaches for his coffee cup, but the thing’s empty at this point, and it’s almost amusing how perturbed the wolf looks at the discovery of this fact if it weren’t so… concerning? Stiles doesn’t know how long werewolves can go without sleep, but it seems like Peter’s reached his limit. Caffeine drinks can only take you so far.

Peter sets his empty cup to the side with a small sigh, grumblingly points out, “Honestly, it’s doubtful that this secret hunting group is even still operational.”

—which, yes, is a good point, but not at all what they should be focusing on when Peter looks like he’s about to crash; both figuratively and literally if the man intends on driving nine hours back to Beacon Hills directly after this.

Stiles can’t say exactly why he does it. Maybe it’s just because of how… helpful Peter’s been these past few days, and in a not-at-all overbearing way like some of the hospital staff, or at times his friends and family—but… a few days, that’s not exactly right either, is it? Peter’s kind of just been around these past several months now, both during Stiles’ breakdown and in the aftermath of it, randomly showing up at the hospital with a new book and some light conversation…

Whatever the reasons may be, before Stiles can put too much thought into it, he finds himself pressing his foot against Peter’s leg in the same way the wolf did to him earlier—just a light pressure to catch his attention, and blue eyes snap up to meet brown with a startled blink, caught off guard. It’s the sort of situation where normally Stiles would be pulling away as quickly as possible, a warning siren blaring in his head to _not poke the wolf_ —but for once his mind is quiet, and he leaves his foot there.

With a small, wry smile, an attempt to make light of the situation, Stiles suggests, “Maybe we should grab a hotel before you drive us nine hours back home?”

He is an expert on sleep deprivation, after all.

It seems to take Peter a few seconds to switch his brain out of research-mode and catch up with the past twenty seconds, but once he does, that typical amused smirk turns up the corners of his lips as he drawls, “Why, Stiles, are you flirting with me?”

He doesn’t even flinch at the kick Stiles aims at his shin. In fact, Peter’s mouth stretches around an actual yawn a second later, and he leans back in his chair, head tilted slightly to the side as he exhales, “Though you might have a point…”

Stiles frowns, and there’s a slight flicker of emotion deep in his chest, a hint of concern and something else… something he isn’t given the chance to properly examine because Liam’s back at their table an instant later. There’s a clear look of alarm on the younger wolf’s face as he blurts out, “ _We have a problem.”_

Stiles immediately draws back from Peter, tucking his limbs up against his own chair, and he feels a sense of tension growing inside as Liam hurriedly gathers up all the old notes and stuffs them back into the steel box.

Speaking in rapid, but quiet tones the whole time, Liam rambles out, “I could hear some employees in the back talking about how familiar you look, Stiles—and yeah, okay, they were just trying to figure out what _movie or tv show_ they know you from, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out—”

Peter slowly rises from his chair, smothering another yawn with splayed fingers and looking as unthreatened by their situation as possible while he packs up his laptop. Liam is a nervous, jittery puppy in comparison, shutting the lockbox’s lid with a loud _clang_ and shoving it into Stiles’ fumbling hands. They’re out the door and back on the street a minute later, the steel box and mountain ash stake packed safely away in the backpack slung over Stiles’ shoulder.

The walk back to the car isn’t done overly fast, because that would be suspicious, but the two wolves do weave skillfully through the crowd, bypassing any slow-walkers, and Stiles is tugged along for the ride, Peter’s hand wrapped around his wrist in a firm but careful grip. There’s a parking ticket waiting on the car’s windshield when they do finally make it back, one that Peter leaves behind on the side of the road as he pulls back out into LA traffic—because what’s one parking ticket after all when there are potential kidnapping charges looming above you?

It’s midday by this point. The sun’s high up in the sky and traffic is slow and packed, the sound of horns blaring intermittently around them with the occasional police siren mixed in. They’re going nowhere fast and Stiles slouches down in his seat, watching out of the corner of his eye as Peter blinks with slow, heavy lids at the line of cars in front of them.

Half-an-hour later, they pull off the road into a motel parking lot.

Stiles presses his lips together tightly to hold back a smile he doesn’t quite understand.

 

* * *

 

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, a lot of info here. I hope I haven’t lost anyone’s interest (and for as much Steter as I’ve read, it’s still such a new favorite pairing for me, so I hope I’m not losing anyone there either for this incredibly slow, _slow_ burn romance!)

**Author's Note:**

> That's all for now. Comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading!  
> (also, [here's my Tumblr](http://deranged-black-kitten.tumblr.com/) if anyone's interested)


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